Congress Should Promote Fairness in State Sales Taxes

When governments levy taxes on businesses or consumers, they should do so in a fair and consistent manner. And yet, when consumers make purchases with online retailers they do not always have to pay the same taxes that they would pay in their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Originally, there was a very good reason for this exemption: with thousands of different tax jurisdictions in the United States, it would simply be too impractical to require e-commerce sites or mail-order catalog businesses to abide by so many different tax rules. But since 2000, states have been working diligently to simplify their tax codes and developers have created software capable of handling the complexity of remitting taxes to multiple jurisdictions. It is now feasible for remote sellers to pay the same taxes as local ones. The next step is for Congress to pass legislation that would enable states to tax goods equally no matter how they are sold.