Internet Commerce and State Sales and Use Taxes

Maguire, Steven

Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service.

关键词: Business;    Electronic commerce - State taxation - Law and legislation;    Taxation;    State and local government;    Technology;   

RP-ID  :  RL31252
RP-ID  :  RL31252_2004Mar31

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

State governments rely on sales and use taxes for approximately one-third(33.6%) of their total tax revenue - or approximately $179 billion in FY2002 .'Local governments derived 12.4% of their tax revenue or $44 .1 billion from localsales and use taxes in FY20012 Both state and local sales taxes are collected byvendors at the time of transaction and are levied at a percentage of a product's retailprice. Alternatively, use taxes are not collected by the vendor if the vendor does nothave nexus (loosely defined as a physical presence) in the consumer's state .Consumers are required to remit use taxes to their taxing jurisdiction . However,compliance with this requirement is quite low. Because of the low compliance, manyobservers suggest that the expansion of the internet as a means of transactingbusiness across state lines, both from business to consumer (B to C) and frombusiness to business (B to B), threatens to diminish the ability of state and localgovernments to collect sales and use taxes .Congress has a role in this issue because commerce between parties in differentstates conducted over the Internet falls under the Commerce Clause of theConstitution.' Congress can either take an active or passive role in the "Internet tax"debate. This report intends to clarify important issues in the Internet tax debate .