Look at our president . . . cut from the same cloth, and went through his classes unquestioning and unthoughtful.

Their is no "unfairness" from a business perspective. B&M stores aren't losing business because of sales tax, they sell products that are becoming commodities and therefore thin margins. The same way that traditional grocery stores are going by the wayside due to unionism. The solution is not to force the competitors to unionize.

Perhaps we (internet vendors) are due a commission?

Regardless, their unions fund Democrats, and at least in CA they have become grossly overpaid.

It is a lot more expensive to ship to and from Canada (I do it all the time), both in shipping costs and border fees (50% or more on top of the shipping cost). Plus additional time of at least a day or two. Canada has a national GST of about 7%, and PST is province based, some have it (most) some don't and about 7%. And Canada is not immune to absurd laws and nonsense, they are masters of it.

First of all it is not "automatic", it is a serious problem for small businesses and it WILL bring some to a halt. In my own experience in CA, it takes me an hour to file quarterly (and I am sure, that strange as it may seem, CA is efficient in this case!) it will take 200-300 man hours to do this, or huge expenses, software, etc. You are free to keep track of and pay tax on any items purchased out of state. In fact, the state does do this in the case of large items, like cars and boats.

Internet vendors still have to have it shipped to their warehouses too . . . genius

It's not that there is "no sales tax", they're just asking a vendor in ME to collect taxes for someone in say, CA. It's not their job to do that, they don't live in CA. But, the argument is being portrayed as "fairness" to local vendors and that is a straw dog. There are many advantages to being local, having product in stock, and not having to ship to a customer. Granted that means the tax will usually not be collected . . . I personally don't care, that is the states problem.

It doesn't apply to businesses with less than $1 million in sales. And they don't have to collect district tax (at least in CA). Nevertheless, your point is correct, for some businesses $1 million may not have a big margin. CA State Board of Equalization has actually done a decent job of making it easier to do quarterly reporting, but it still takes an hour or so, so that would mean at least 50 hours of time a quarter or 200 hours a year . . . insane. Or pay big bucks to an accountant.

It's strange to me that my two Sen. in CA support this. California being the home of a huge number of internet only companies, giving a greater benefit to CA than the loss of sales tax as internal businesses already collect local taxes. So they are just discouraging business in California. The article is correct, that this is a huge advantage for big companies as the infrastructure is already in place for them to deal with this. And the truth is that internet companies (which is how I make my living) already deal with shipping costs and time to delivery cost, which easily outweigh the tax issue. This could bite them in the rear though. Amazon is now expanding its warehouse locations and there is talk of expanded same day and next day delivery! So the "showrooming" problem will only get worse for Best Buy and others.