sales tax
one of the reasons some states are enacting new sales tax laws is because people were not paying their taxes when they made online purchases. If you look at your income tax paperwork, with most states there is a line for you to put the amount of money spent on online purchases and calculate the tax you owe. This is one reason companies like Amazon send a yearend statement to their frequent buyers. So it was up to the honor system for people to pay. As you can imagine, too many people decided not to pay figuring that no one would be the wiser. Probably so, but this loss of revenue for your state creates a whole lot of other problems. We discovered this when our group purchased uniforms for a school group and the company (located in another state) sent us the form letting us know they had filed with our state. Granted this was a large purchase, but following researching it, we discovered that it applies to all purchases made that the company did not charge tax for.