美国国家公共电台 NPR Massachusetts Tries Something New To Claim Taxes From Online Sales

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Each year, states lose many millions of dollars in uncollected taxes from e-commerce sales, so a lot of states have begun crafting their own rules to get some of that tax money back. Massachusetts is just the latest state to do this. But the way it's doing it is unprecedented 1. From WBUR in Boston, Asma Khalid reports.

ASMA KHALID, BYLINE 2: Michelle O'Brien is a 44-year-old internet shopping fanatic 3.

MICHELLE O'BRIEN: I buy all my pet food and pet supplies online. I buy most of my laundry detergent 4, shampoos and almost everything really besides groceries.

KHALID: O'brien, like a lot of Americans, started shopping online more in the last couple of years.

O'BRIEN: You don't even have to be, you know, on your laptop. You can be pretty much anywhere and just open an app and order some things.

KHALID: Thanks to people like O'Brien, online sales are growing by about 15 percent each year. The thing is, all those online sales don't necessarily bring in tax dollars. Amazon started collecting sales tax nationwide this past April, but most online retailers 5 still don't. They only collect sales tax from customers where they have a physical presence. Richard Jones, a tax attorney with the firm Sullivan and Worcester, explains.

RICHARD JONES: It usually means when there's a warehouse 6, an office, an employee located in those states. It doesn't have to be much, but it has to be something, something real, something physical.

KHALID: Technically 7 when you shop online, you're still supposed to pay up when you file your annual taxes. But in reality, most people don't, and there's nobody actively 8 enforcing the rules. That means there's a lot of potential money being left on the table. Massachusetts is fighting to recover some of it. Back in 1992, the Supreme 9 Court ruled that retailers must have a physical presence in a state to collect taxes. Now Massachusetts is adopting a hyper-literal definition of physical presence. Here's tax attorney Jones again.

JONES: Massachusetts is arguing that these vendors 11 with no property and no people and no offices in the state - they still have physical presence because of internet cookies.

KHALID: OK, so quick recap if you missed that - the state is saying that cookies, little bits of data from a website stored locally on your computer or a shopping app that you download to your phone, create a physical, in-state operation for a company. Essentially 12 it's an internet answer to an internet problem. But Jones says it raises a lot of questions about how you define property.

JONES: Who's the owner? There's a presumption 13 that the internet vendor 10 retains ownership of that little, tiny bit of advertising 14 software tracking code. I'm not sure if that's right.

KHALID: But whether or not it's right doesn't matter to a lot of brick-and-mortar stores. They're just happy something is finally being done. They claim the current tax system hurts their business.

BILL RENNIE: You know, for years, retailers here and across the country have argued for a level playing field.

KHALID: That's Bill Rennie. He's with the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

RENNIE: It's become much more important each year now with the growth of mobile commerce. Folks can shop and comparison shop and purchase anywhere they want from their smartphone.

KHALID: And so to some folks, this Massachusetts tax theory seems like sheer genius. But to others, it is a shameless tax grab. Steve DelBianco is on the shameless side. He leads NetChoice, a national trade association representing e-commerce sites. He says under this strange Massachusetts theory...

STEVE DELBIANCO: Your business is subject to the taxation 15, regulation in any state where a user simply enters their website address. That can't hold up to legal scrutiny 16 because it certainly doesn't hold up to common sense.

KHALID: DelBianco is not convinced a cookie on your computer is the same thing as a storefront in a strip mall, and he's willing to take that argument to court. He says his group is getting ready for a lawsuit 17. For NPR News, I'm Asma Khalid in Boston.