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I’ve been following the online sales tax bill and it looks like its finally going to getting passed into law soon.  As a web developer this concerns me greatly.  I’ve built and continue to build numerous web sites that have eCommerce functionality.  It would be so easy for the Government to screw this up, so the certain senator that reads this blog…listen up!  This could easily be an epic disaster if the merchant is required to charge sales tax based on the consumer’s locality.  Each State, County, and City has their own sales rates.  The last figures I saw estimated about 7,000 different sales territories with unique rates.  If they are going to require businesses to charge like that they need to provide some sort of RSS feed of all sales tax districts, not to mention different items fall into different categories.  Without this listing its virtually impossible for businesses to comply.  From a technology standpoint providing this listing and generating the listing would be fairly simple.  I doubt that Congress enlists the expertise let alone listen and follow the solutions that are reccomended by such experts.  I dont think its wrong for them to charge a sales tax, it makes perfect sense, but its a logistical nightmare.  I hope they do away with income taxes and move towards the fair tax, but doubt it will happen.  Anyway.  Stay tuned to this blog for updates, you know I’ll be posting/ranting about it.

Happy webbing.