Jim, please re-READ what you have quoted.  It's pretty clear but you do
have to read and understand what their ruling was. I stand by my
original post.

Quote from your link, above:

Who Will Remit Sales Taxes on Internet and Mail-Order Sales?

The vitality of the sales tax as a critical state and local government
revenue source has been eroded in recent years by the rapid growth in
mail-order and Internet sales. Sales taxes are due on mail-order and
Internet purchases just as they are on purchases in stores.(1) But a
large majority of the sales taxes due on mail-order and Internet
purchases made by individual consumers and a significant share of the
taxes due on purchases made by businesses are effectively uncollectible.
States and localities are unable to collect these taxes because the
Supreme Court has prohibited states from requiring mail-order and
Internet merchants to charge the customer for the tax and remit it to
the customer's state unless the merchant has a physical presence or
"nexus" within the state's borders. This means that although an Internet
merchant like Amazon.com presumably has customers in every or nearly
every state, it can only be required to collect sales tax from customers
in its home state of Washington and a handful of other states in which
it has built warehouses or stationed personnel.

If the seller does not charge and remit the tax, laws require customers
of Internet and mail-order companies to pay the state and local sales
tax directly to their home states. However, compliance with this
self-remittance requirement is almost non-existent in the case of
individual consumers and is spotty in the case of businesses that make
purchases from Internet, mail-order, and other "remote" sellers. The
combination of weak tax compliance by purchasers and a sharply limited
tax collection obligation on the part of remote sellers is eroding the
sales tax base of state and local governments

All the supreme court did was to nix requiring the various mail order
companies to collect taxes on behalf of the home states of their
purchasers.  However, the individual buyer is still legally required to
pay the taxes to their home state.  In practice almost nobody does so
and in practice the states have rarely tried to enforce this law against
individuals, but I know first hand that they sometimes go after business
purchasers because there is enough money potentially there to make the
costs of collections worthwhile.

On 12/26/2007 8:02 PM Grumpy AuContraire spake these words of knowledge:

When you file your state income tax this year, look for an entry about
this.  You will be asked to declare the amount of your untaxed
out-of-state purchases; this will absolutely include any purchases made
over the intarweb.  If you lie, you are committing the crime of tax
fraud.  The chances of being caught are small, but only because the
various states aren't pursuing this avenue currently, not because the
records are hard to get.

If you don't want to wait until you file your taxes, ask a tax preparer;
they should be popping up like jack rabbits in the next several weeks.

RFT!!!
Dave Kelsen

It CAN be collected and passed on to the local taxing authority.

However, there's no mandate that such collection take place in such a
situation.

There's a big difference.  A retailer may act as a tax collector for any
venue.

You should read the legislation more carefully.  The federal law
prohibits forcing companies to collect sales taxes from out of state
customers.  It does not prohibit states from charging or collecting use
taxes directly from the customers.

Some people don't seem to comprehend this distinction.

Ain't that the truth...  But stupid often does what stupid sez.

Ya gotta luv 'em!

JT

You'll find it happens quite frequently after an audit...