Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I agree with you that paying sales tax regardless of where you buy from would be the sensible option, but I'm a bit puzzled about why use tax can't be enforced. Why can't the IRS (or whoever it is that's responsible for it) simply take a random sampling of sales records from retailers and check to see if the customer has declared the amount for use tax? That's the way that the authorities do VAT checks here.
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It's federalism at work. We have no
national sales tax. Sales taxes are
state taxes, and state governments only have the right to levy taxes on transactions that occur within their state. Further, the US constitution explicitly prohibits states from taxing or regulating
interstate commerce. That is strictly the purview of the federal government.