Sonny Tufts
Member

You neglected to read further and note how the use tax is calculated. Any sales tax paid to the state in which the purchase is made is subtracted from the use tax payable to California. There is no double tax because you will never pay more than the use tax you would owe if no sales tax had ever been collected by the seller.

A state's authority to tax its citizens doesn't depend on their engaging in privileged activity. It's not meddling when the states enter into the sales tax agreement voluntarily. Hopelessly wrong. If you pay sales tax in the state in which you made the purchase, you won't owe use tax when you bring it back to your home state. If you didn't pay sales tax, however (because sales tax isn't normally charged on items that are shipped out of state immediately after purchase), you will.

So you think that supporting the right of someone to march free of government interference automatically means that you support the marcher's message?

They defended the American Nazi Party's right to march in Skokie, hardly something a Commies group would do.

You would be liable for use tax in your state of residence, although it might be very difficult for the state to enforce the liability. The prohibition on taxing "imports" without Congressional approval found in I.10.2 applies only to shipments from a foreign country, not those from other States. They have the authority to impose use taxes upon their residents, but it's much easier to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax.

Sears and Wards had stores in most if not all of the States they shipped to, unlike Amazon, L.L. Bean, and many online sellers. Under the Quill case (which today's decision overturned) that was enough to require them to collect sales taxes on catalog sales.

The Supreme Court created the physical presence test to begin with, and today's opinion simply undoes what the Court did decades ago.