Reply #26: I have a small, on-line, publishing business

[panzerfaust]

Being based in Texas, I pay state sales tax on anything that ships to a Texas address. I can look on a state provided chart to figure out what the actual tax rate should be.

However, I do not, and the State of Texas does not require me, to collect sales taxes on items shipped out-of-state.

Given the multiple overlapping taxing authorities the only way to even know what the applicable sales tax would be in another state is to subscribe to a program which can calculate the tax rate for a given address. The cost of such a subscription exceeds my annual profit by manyfold. At the same time, my business would not be sustainable at all if I only sold to Texas residents.

So, Colorado, I will have to look into this. If Colorado expects me to collect the appropriate tax (and if one does not collect the appropriate tax for a given address one is, at least in Texas, heavily fined if it is too much, or too little) then I am just going to have to add a note to my order form: "Sorry, we are unable to accept orders from Colorado".

Why should I have to pay sales-tax in Colorado at all? I would get nothing from Colorado in return for paying taxes there.

A fixed-rate national on-line sales tax (the proceeds then apportioned to the states) would, of course, be a not unreasonable way of dealing with this issue.

However, from my perspective, I am happy with the way things are at the moment.