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Posted by David Sherman on Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 11:57:31 :
In Reply to: E-bay is not the retailer.... posted by Eric B. on Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 11:29:22 :
This guy definitely doesn't have a location in Idaho. He just used it to get a little more money. Washington state just change the law so that sellers within the state have to collect sales tax based on the in-state buyer's home address. Washington has a "local option" sales tax that varies widely all over the state, generally in the 8-9% range. Every county and city can add its own tax, up to a limit. There are probably a dozen different tax rates, and it takes a whole book to know which one to apply to whom. This change in the law is no doubt something the big cities, that are charging 9% sales tax, wanted because they're afraid they're losing revenue when people shop in rural areas that are still "only" charging 8%. To squeeze a couple tenths of a percent more out of the consumers, the retailers are going to have to go through a huge amount of paperwork and reprogramming of computers. There are of course some limits on who they have to check and what kinds of sales it applies to, so some hardware store in Omak doesn't get busted for charging the wrong tax when they sell a screw to a guy from Seattle, but it's a typical huge bureaucratic mess of a "solution" to what is surely a very small problem. It does show you how desperate the big cities are getting for revenue, though.