Subject: Internet Sales Tax   This was posted in the Saint Petersburg Times, 22 July, 2013

I believe I have a simple solution to the proposed Internet Sales Tax. The dilemma is that e-commerce dealers may have to correctly collect from and submit taxes to 50 states, each state must be broken down by the county, a total of 3,143 counties.

As an e-commerce reseller, we've been watching this, and to the best of my knowledge, no such software exists that can handle it. It would be a huge burden for the small, medium, even "large" reseller, with the exception of Amazon, of course, who is now backing the idea of an internet sales tax.

My solution: Make it a standardized sales tax, of say 5%, and that tax would be paid 1/2 to the state, and 1/2 to the county where the business is actually based. This would cover all sales, in state and out of state, for items ordered over the internet. This levels the playing field and adds little to the overhead of the reseller. It may even create some competition between states and counties to encourage e-commerce businesses to locate in their jurisdiction.

Addendum: While only 45 out of 50 states collect sales tax, in the other 5, the money could go to the local government, or if they elect not to (or cannot, by constitution), then the money could go right to the federal government, perhaps right to Congress, who would agree to that in a heartbeat, and they should agree to forgo their Congressional retirements for Social Security, like the rest of us.