"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
...
State Sales Tax

You are obligated to pay sales tax on all taxable items to the state where
you reside.

If the merchant has a facility in your state, they are obligated to
collect the tax and forward it to the state.

If the merchant does not have a presence in your state, they are still
obligated to collect the sales tax and forward it to your state.

Unless your state pursues out of state merchants to collect their sales
tax due them, most merchants either ignore or refuse to collect sales tax
on out of state sales.

Doesn't release the merchant from their responsibility, but usually not
worth the time to pursue collection for small amounts.

Some states such as New York and California aggressively pursue collecting
sales tax due them on out of state purchases.

States are beginning to work with each other to close the out of state
sales tax loop holes.

Computers make it a rather straight forward task.

Bottom line..............................................

The buyer is responsible for paying sales taxes to the state where they
live, regardless of where the item was purchased.

Lew

Unfortunately the computers need to know how to apply sales tax for each
sale. While that may seem straight forward many states do not have that
information for computer input, basically speaking it is still only
available in print.

Now while that may seem simple, read the print and input the information for
taxing, it is really astoundingly complicated.
Sales in tax in Texas alone is a night mare. If you live in the Houston
metro area you will pay different sales taxes depending on what street you
make the purchase on. Some additional taxes apply for different
authorities.
I have had to charge up to 3 different rates to customers that live within
15 minutes from where I live.
Collecting sales tax from a store front is simple as the sale is made from a
single point and the sales tax is always the same. It gets complicated when
the item is sold to a location where possession of the goods do not take
place in the store. That is when other tax authorities and rate come into
play.

My son works PT during school for a fortune 500 company. His job this past
summer and fall was to contact every state that the company does business in
and validate the tax collections for the stores in each of the states.
After 6 months of research I believe that they are going to settle for what
they believe to be correct.

Because you cannot normally get the same answer from state employees as to
what taxes should be collected for any one particular location, inputting
the information into your personal business computer is going to be a good
guess at best.

If it were black and white, tax collection from other states would already
be being enforced.

But you are correct that everything you buy should be taxed and technically
you are oblogated to pay the tax one way or another.