Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm sorry, but you've slightly lost me. Retailers who have a presence in a state have to charge sales tax. True? Plainly, that being the case, the task of deciding the correct rate of sales tax to charge based on the customer's location, is not an insurmountable one, because innumerable retailers do precisely this.
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As pwalker8 already explained, it is relatively straightforward to compute the sales tax in my location. But each little town in USA can have a slightly different sales tax on the same item. You pay state tax and then town tax and some other things, as far as I understand it. So the retailer would have to know precisely where the buyer is located (which can be different from the delivery address) and would have to find out state tax, county tax, town tax ... whatever else. AND, then they would have to send those money to relevant entity - state, county, town ...
If you are an artisan with an on-line store, selling 6 handmade dulcimers per year to a 6 different buyers in 6 different states, what are you supposed to do? Spend a week studying local taxes for Middle of Nowhere Township in North Dakota and then spend a week getting paperwork so you are registered to pay tax there?