Internet.com: eBay Rallies in D.C. Against Web Tax Change

eBay tried to rally support against a federal bill that would streamline sales taxes from cities, states and counties. Right now these taxes go mostly uncollected, as it remains practically impossible for jurisdictions to get their citizens to submit payments themselves for purchasing items through catalogs or via the web. Creating a standard set of rules and practices would let these jurisdictions force the retailers to set aside the payments themselves.

This could allow local entities to employ highly discriminatory taxes (or at least discriminatory tax collection policies) against retailers outside their jurisdictions. The workings of the typical U.S. county go noticed mostly by local business interests, who also are the funders of the vast majority of campaign contributions to county governments. There would be nothing stopping a locality to create punishing taxes to deliberately restrain trade across its borders. Even if it raised sales taxes uniformly, it could opt to not fund local collections efforts.