Just bought a $700 TV on line. Paid 6% PA sales tax to the company in North Carolina. I guess it’s up to that company in NC to pay PA?
Yes. Many companies do that. Most states have a law that if there is a "brick & mortar" operation in the state, on-line sales by that operation must be taxed in that state (WalMart on-line is a good example, they charge the sales tax on on-line purchases). Other companies have agreed to add the sales tax. If it was added to your purchase, you're off the hook. Just keep the receipt.
My understanding is that any store that operates in PA will charge you the tax regardless of the purchase location. For example, Walmart online will charge the PA tax because they operate stores in PA. Some internet stores operate only in states that have low population and are centrally located just for that reason. The interstate sales are regulated by the Federal Government not the individual States.
Does that company have a presence in PA?
YES
If the company collected sales tax from you, it means they have a business presense in the state of PA. They will report your sale to PA and will pay the tax to your state.
The companies that don’t collect sales tax are companies that don’t do business in your state. Your state most likely has a law that requires you to report the sale and pay the tax directly on your income tax. You probably don’t know about the law, and skip that part in your income tax book.
So far, the fight on the internet has been to keep states from being allowed to force companies that “do business” in the state ONLY because they offer online sales from having to collect sales tax for every state and locality in the country.
That is what I think they are talking about here — setting up a system to require every online company to collect sales tax for each state.
Hopefully, they will at least require the states to set up the systems to make it easy for the companies to do so, rather than make the companies upgrade their own software.
At one point there was a discussion of just requiring state sales tax, but not local taxes, because that would only require 50 different charges.
But note that any online company that also has brick-and-mortar around the country already has to handle most of the state sales taxes. So the current system discriminates against companies that have a physical presence in the state, against those who don’t.
That doesn’t seem to be reasonable. Why should Barnes and Noble.com have to collect sales tax for a book I buy, but Amazon.com doesn’t? It gives Amazon an unfair business advantage — and the state if anything should be prefering the company that actually pays property taxes in our state.