Online Taxes

In a legal battle that could influence existing federal tax policy, South Dakota is suing four big internet retailers to force them to comply with the state’s new remote seller sales tax law. On March 22, South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed Senate Bill 106 into law. It requires out-of-state online retailers that sell a minimum…

Affiliates and online sellers are the losers thanks to Louisiana's attempt to pressure Amazon.com to collect its state sales tax on purchases made by Louisiana residents. Amazon sent a letter to affiliates in the state last month explaining it was ending its advertising relationship with them. Not only will Amazon affiliates in the state lose out…

Congress introduced a new spending bill this week that could avert a government shutdown, and it could also spell relief for eBay and its sellers. eBay has been urging sellers to write to Congress opposing two bills that would require online sellers to collect sales tax even in states where they don't have nexus: the…

Thanks to a new Speaker being named to the House of Representatives, eBay warned its sellers again about the online sales tax bill called the Remote Transactions Parity Act, and urged them to contact their legislators to tell them not to pass it. In a post on Tuesday, it briefed members of its eBay Main…

The Marketplace Fairness Act failed to secure Congressional approval again last year, but was reintroduced in the Senate in March. This week, a different version surfaced in the House. Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz introduced the Remote Transactions Parity Act of 2015 on Monday. Retail groups including the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Retail Industry Leaders…

Speakers share best practices to take your retail business international from e-commerce professionals and retailers who’ve done it.

Senators seeking to give states broader latitude to charge sales taxes on internet purchases are preparing a last-ditch effort to pass legislation through Congress before the midterm elections. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has been pushing such a fix for years, insisting it would level the playing field between brick-and-mortar and online retailers. Now, Senate supporters believe they have a perfect vehicle: the Internet Tax Freedom Act, a relatively uncontroversial measure, which sailed through the House on Tuesday, that would extend a long-standing ban on state and local taxes on internet access.

National Retail Federation Vice President and Employee Benefits Policy Counsel Neil Trautwein testified yesterday before the House Ways and Means Committee on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), where he reiterated the retail industry's strong support for modifying the health care law's employer mandate and 30-hour requirement for coverage. "Many retail and restaurant employees do not fit neatly into full- and part-time categories and compliance with the unprecedented levels of change under the ACA will be particularly challenging," Trautwein testified. 

Following a California court decision, online retailer Overstock.com is facing significant changes to the way it compares prices on its site, and the company believes the court's decision could cause a ripple effect across the rest of the retail world. Today, when offering a price comparison for a particular product sold on its site, Overstock compares its price to a price recently offered by a single competitor — an approach that overstates the extent of the company's discounts, according to a lawsuit from a group of California district attorneys. 

Small merchants and individuals who sell online will most certainly come across an unpleasant reality sooner or later: the need to provide their taxpayer ID (a social security number or EIN) to any entity that processes payments on their behalf. That's because companies that process credit and debit cards as well as third-party network payments such as Etsy, PayPal and Amazon.com are required to report to merchants and to the IRS the gross amount of the transactions they've processed.