Online Sales + Tax - Retail News.

It's a question that's been debated almost from the very first sale of a product online: Should merchants be required to collect sales tax for the states where the product is shipped to or sold from?

To date, the answer has been that whether taxes are collected or not is pretty much up to the merchant. As a piece by Janet Novak on the Forbes web site points out, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in what has become known as the Quill case which said states cannot require an online retailer to collect tax unless it has some physical connection to the state, such as a warehouse, administrative building, etc.