I think that's just going to hurt small businesses with physical nexus in one state, who do some e-commerce in the rest of the country. Compliance costs will be burdensome, and the mega-competitors like Amazon and Walmart have already effectively made this change moot, by setting up same-day delivery fulfillment centers in every state.
I don’t think the existence of fulfillment centers in each state would be sufficient to avoid this tax. It wouldn’t make sense. Every other business in a state that caters to clientele in that state has to pay state taxes. In fact, from the article, state presence could require the payment of state taxes: “ The Supreme Court ruling said states couldn’t require out-of-state retailers to collect sales taxes from consumers unless those retailers had a physical presence -- through branches, warehouses or employees -- where the consumers were located.” So states can only require the collection of state taxes if there IS a physical presence Or am I misreading something?
Amazon finally agreed to pay tax in California 6 months before they rolled out Amazon 1-day. In Washington it was three months. Most analysts, in fact, saw Amazon's sales tax agreements to be predictors of where they were rolling out 1-day next The law as it exists basically says "if you've got an employee there the state can make you collect sales tax" but the law as it exists requires states attorneys general to devote resources to pursuing out-of-state companies and it doesn't pencil out. Amazon knew that building fulfillment centers would give CA and WA the ammunition they needed to make it worthwhile so they capitulated. The fact that they're now paying it everywhere is an admission that they see things going that way and it was worth capitulating for first-responder advantage.
Starting a fulfillment center in every state doesn't let them avoid this, they're essentially surrendering. If they have to collect sales tax anyway, they may as well have nexus in all 50 states now. Once they do, they can offer better service like same day delivery, 1 hour delivery, and grocery delivery services.
Why would it? If you have a physical location already, you're passing through sales tax already. Compliance costs are a lookup table and a middleman; if Square promises to provide tax compliance to all merchant accounts, Paypal, Visa, Venmo and everyone else would have to do the same. Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming have no income tax. Their infrastructure is paid for by sales tax. Their local brick'n'mortars are being punished by not only maintaining a retail location but by having to charge customers a premium; when I buy computer stuff yer damn skippy I buy Newegg rather than Amazon because it's 11% cheaper. Repeat times everything you buy.I think that's just going to hurt small businesses with physical nexus in one state, who do some e-commerce in the rest of the country.
If you're going to go down the road of citing online sales tax rates, consider choosing a reference that is kept up to date such as Avalara's tax rate data. As far as buying from online merchants / marketplaces to avoid sales tax, those days are coming to a close as a result of the June, 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair decision allowing states to tax remote sales.