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States Don't Have Much Leverage
I think in the states that do charge sales taxes on out of state web sites there is usually a sales volume threshold amount before the web site is required to charge sales taxes, such as $100,000 of sales into that remote state. I know that the Tennessee legislature had a plan for taxing sales if the web site sold more than $500,000 into Tennessee. That should affect only a very few major web sellers. They shelved the plan until they resolved this court case. They will probably bring it up again. So not all web sites will be forced to collect the sales taxes.
As a practical matter, if I’m a small to medium sized owner of a web site in Missouri for example, and I sell into California, what are they going to do if I don’t collect and remit sales taxes to California. My company is not under the jurisdiction of California, so I could tell them to go pound sand and there is probably not much they could do about it. Until Congress makes that a federal crime, the states don’t have much leverage to exert in this matter.
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