I’m not obsessively following it, but I am paying attention.

Here in Illinois we have 102 counties, each one of them can have county sales tax on top of the state, and then municipality on top of that. Fortunately, Illinois makes it easy to look up the rate for the location for live shows, and I’ve had maybe one in-state Etsy purchase over the years.

A few years ago Etsy supposedly made it easier to collect sales taxes from multiple jurisdictions - provided you look up the rates and set them all up yourself.

If we do have to start collecting sales tax on sales to states where we don’t have a physical presence, either the states and sites like Etsy are going to have to give us help, or a *lot* of sellers are likely to just . . . not. And will I have to register with every state and submit a sales tax return in every state? Business/sales tax registration here in Illinois is free, but costs me $10 every year or three in Wisconsin. I can’t see any way having to collect sales tax on all internet sales is going to be anything but painful for small businesses.

It wouldn’t be as bad if we could collect the tax at the basic state rates and only report/pay for what’s actually collected, without a fee or with an annual fee based on actual sales. Or even better, if we could just collect based on the rate where the seller is, on the theory that it will tend to even out - but I’m NOT holding my breath on that idea!


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