Allow online sellers to collect sales tax in US states, asks NRF

Urging the US Government to recognise the evolution of the retail industry in the last 25 years, the National Retail Federation (NRF) has urged the Congress to pass a law allowing states to mandate online sellers to collect sales tax in the same manner as brick-and-mortar stores do rather than continuing to leave the issue to state courts’ discretion.

Refusing to allow out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax, the South Dakota supreme court recently ruled against a 2016 state law requiring online merchants with more than $100,000 in sales or 200 transactions with state residents to collect sales tax.

The ruling is in line with a 1992 US supreme court decision, which held that online sellers can only be required to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence, such as a store, office or a warehouse.

“We are more than happy to see the supreme court revisit this issue, but we view a carefully crafted stakeholder-led decision in Congress as far preferable to a judicial decision that reverses the previous ruling without addressing the details of implementation,” NRF senior vice president for government relations David French said in a press release.

French called on the Congress to pass the Remote Transactions Parity Act, a pending bill that would allow states to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax regardless of whether they have a presence in the customer’s state.

NRF is the world’s largest retail trade association, representing discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, main street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and Internet retailers from the United States and more than 45 countries.