There's a lot more to this ... (Score 1)

This reply doesn't quite get to the heart of the matter. The courts have never said that the states may not tax interstate commerce. They have said that the states may not treat interstate commerce *worse* than intra-state commerce. If a state applies a sales tax to commerce within its borders, the commerce clause has nothing to say about that. If a state taxes interstate commerce at the same rate and on the same base as other commerce, no problem. It is only when a state taxes interstate commerce at a higher rate or on a broader base that it is deemed to be discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. In the Quill decision, the company had very minimal presence in the taxing state -- some floppy disks belonging to the company were found to not constitute "nexus", the legal term meaning that they have enough presence to make them subject to the state's right to require collection of tax. The court said that requiring collection of sales tax for multiple states is a burden on the company doing interstate commerce, and is a greater burden than on a company with a single location, and therefore is not justified unless they have a "substantial presence" in the taxing state. The decision also made it clear that Congress has the right to legislate some rules in this area. So the states have tried to work on a system that alleviates the burden of sales tax collection on out of state businesses. At the moment the Streamlined Sales Tax Project is a *voluntary* system, so companies can opt in or not. Obviously lots of web sellers will not opt in, but the companies who have to collect sales tax anyway love it and are helping to drive the process forward. Walmart, for example, has to collect sales tax in all 50 states, and having the states adopt uniform definitions, uniform procedures and pre-approved tax software is like a dream come true. Without Congressional action however, it will never be anything other than voluntary. So in many ways this is not just a tax vs. no-tax story. It is bricks-and-mortar vs. web companies too.