This is the libruls isn’t it.
Nah, just silly state governments trying to apply laws that made sense 15 years ago (when people made fewer out of state purchases) to Internet commerce. Like I said, they’re desperate so they’re spending more than the usual effort to enforce this, as clumsy as it is.
Maybe if the economy turns around, they will quiet down before the feds step in and change the laws. Then we can avoid it for a few more years.
Actually the sales tax you pay in and around Atlanta fluctuates between 6% and 8% depending on which county you are in and whether you are physically within the border of the city proper. There are some streets where there’s a 1% difference for being on the wrong side of the street.
As to whether a flat tax could be collected for each state? The best chance that could happen would be via the streamlined sales tax project (SSTP). This requires all states who want to participate to rewrite their sales tax laws to follow the SSTP standards, which primarily takes care of the major burden of accurate sales tax collection - differences in what is and is not taxed between regions. Is food taxed? Raw or prepared? Is processed food considered prepared? What about diapers? Adult diapers or just baby diapers? Which OTC medicines might or might not be taxed in a given city?
The major obstacle for this is a reluctance for some states to change their laws as their current sales tax laws may be significantly different from what SSTP requires. Additionally, while the state level government would have to drive this, it might be a hard sell to local counties and cities who currently have their own tax laws as well and would of course want a piece of the action but likely would not want to make the changes required.
Note that even with SSTP in place, it’s still at best only voluntary compliance for e-tailers. What might give them incentive to participate would be the allure of receiving vendor’s compensation - a legal kickback from the state governments in the form of a small percentage of the taxes collected to compensate for the cost of collecting the taxes (for an e-tailer their cost to collect and remit the almost entirely electronic payment transactions would be minimal, so they’d make money on this). However, this compensation is probably not enough to overcome the benefits of the public perception that these items are cheaper for being “tax-free”.