IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/itaxpf/v6y1999i2p193-224.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Electronic Commerce and the State Retail Sales Tax: A Challenge to American Federalism

Author

Listed:
  • Charles McLure

Abstract

Electronic commerce, by magnifying problems with the existing sales tax, has precipitated reexamination of basic precepts of fiscal federalism in the United States, not just taxation of remote sellers. This paper examines: key features of electronic commerce; the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the Commission it mandates; tax assignments in the United States; problems in assigning sales taxes to subnational governments; constitutional impediments to requiring remote vendors to collect sales and use taxes; tentative findings of the National Tax Association's project on taxation of electronic commerce; and implications of the current debate over taxation of electronic commerce for intergovernmental fiscal relations in the United States. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999

Suggested Citation

  • Charles McLure, 1999. "Electronic Commerce and the State Retail Sales Tax: A Challenge to American Federalism," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 6(2), pages 193-224, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:6:y:1999:i:2:p:193-224
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1008751731414
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1008751731414
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1008751731414?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hellerstein, Walter, 1997. "Transaction Taxes and Electronic Commerce: Designing State Taxes That Work in an Interstate Environment," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 50(3), pages 593-606, September.
    2. Peha, Jon M. & Strauss, Robert P., 1997. "A Primer on Changing Information Technology and the Fisc," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 50(3), pages 607-621, September.
    3. Fox, William F. & Murray, Matthew N., 1997. "The Sales Tax and Electronic Commerce: So What's New?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 50(3), pages 573-92, September.
    4. Peha, Jon M. & Strauss, Robert P., 1997. "A Primer on Changing Information Technology and the Fisc," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 50(3), pages 607-21, September.
    5. Hellerstein, Walter, 1997. "Transaction Taxes and Electronic Commerce: Designing State Taxes That Work in an Interstate Environment," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 50(3), pages 593-606, September.
    6. Slemrod, Joel, 1990. "Optimal Taxation and Optimal Tax Systems," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 157-178, Winter.
    7. Richard Bird & Pierre Gendron, 1998. "Dual VATs and Cross-Border Trade: Two Problems, One Solution?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 5(3), pages 429-442, July.
    8. Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "In a World Without Borders: The Impact of Taxes on Internet Commerce," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 561-576.
    9. Fox, William F. & Murray, Matthew N., 1997. "The Sales Tax and Electronic Commerce: So What's New?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 50(3), pages 573-592, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David R. Agrawal & William F. Fox, 2021. "Taxing Goods and Services in a Digital Era," National Tax Journal, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(1), pages 257-301.
    2. Charles E. McLure, Jr., 2002. "Thinking Straight about the Taxation of Electronic Commerce: Tax Principles, Compliance Problems, and Nexus," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 16, pages 115-140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Mintz, Jack M., 2000. "Taxation of Investment and Finance in an International Setting: Implications for Tax Competition," CoFE Discussion Papers 00/33, University of Konstanz, Center of Finance and Econometrics (CoFE).
    4. Charles McLure, 2000. "Implementing Subnational Value Added Taxes on Internal Trade: The Compensating VAT (CVAT)," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 7(6), pages 723-740, December.
    5. Rahul Mukherji, 2002. "Governing The Taxation Of Digitized Trade," ASARC Working Papers 2002-05, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    6. Horacio L. P. Piffano, 2007. "Argentina and Brazil: Fiscal Harmonization and Subnational Sales Taxation – State / Provincial VAT versus State / Provincial Retail Sales Tax," IIE, Working Papers 069, IIE, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Austan Goolsbee, 2001. "The Implications of Electronic Commerce for Fiscal Policy (and Vice Versa)," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 13-23, Winter.
    2. Weiner, Joann M., 1997. "Discussion of Papers on Telecommunications Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 50(3), pages 623-630, September.
    3. Cuneyt Koyuncu & Donald Lien, 2003. "E-commerce and consumer's purchasing behaviour," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(6), pages 721-726.
    4. Ligthart, J.E., 2004. "Consumption Taxation in a Digital World : A Primer," Other publications TiSEM 46537bf7-4822-4dbe-b3fa-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Bruce, Donald & Fox, William F., 2000. "E-Commerce in the Context of Declining State Sales Tax Bases," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 53(4), pages 1373-1390, December.
    6. David R. Agrawal & William F. Fox, 2017. "Taxes in an e-commerce generation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(5), pages 903-926, September.
    7. Koyuncu, Cuneyt & Bhattacharya, Gautam, 2004. "The impacts of quickness, price, payment risk, and delivery issues on on-line shopping," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 241-251, April.
    8. Bruce, Donald & Fox, William F., 2000. "E-Commerce in the Context of Declining State Sales Tax Bases," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 53(n. 4), pages 1373-90, December.
    9. James Alm & H. Spencer Banzhaf, 2012. "Designing Economic Instruments For The Environment In A Decentralized Fiscal System," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 177-202, April.
    10. Fox, William F. & Hargaden, Enda Patrick & Luna, LeAnn, 2022. "Statutory incidence and sales tax compliance: Evidence from Wayfair," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    11. Austan Goolsbee, 1998. "In a World Without Borders: The Impact of Taxes on Internet Commerce," NBER Working Papers 6863, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Charles Scott & Frederick Derrick & Norman Sedgley, 2003. "Consumption taxes in the internet world," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 9(4), pages 304-311, November.
    13. Nora Paulus & Patrice Pieretti & Benteng Zou, 2021. "Is a Dynamic Approach to Tax Games Relevant?," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 144, pages 113-138.
    14. Asplund, Marcus & Friberg, Richard & Wilander, Fredrik, 2007. "Demand and distance: Evidence on cross-border shopping," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1-2), pages 141-157, February.
    15. Sharma, Chanchal Kumar, 2004. "Implementing VAT in India :Implications for Federal Polity," MPRA Paper 206, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 25 Feb 2005.
    16. Ernesto Longobardi, 2014. "At the Origin of Italian VAT: an Early Proposal of a Dual System of Consumption Taxation," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(3), pages 177-199.
    17. Lesley Chiou & Erich Muehlegger, 2014. "Consumer Response to Cigarette Excise Tax Changes," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 67(3), pages 621-650, September.
    18. Alvaro Pereira & João Jalles & Martin Andresen, 2012. "Structural change and foreign direct investment: globalization and regional economic integration," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 11(1), pages 35-82, April.
    19. Victor Stango & Jonathan Zinman, 2014. "Limited and Varying Consumer Attention: Evidence from Shocks to the Salience of Bank Overdraft Fees," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(4), pages 990-1030.
    20. Kaplanoglou, Georgia & Newbery, David Michael, 2003. "Indirect Taxation in Greece: Evaluation and Possible Reform," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(5), pages 511-533, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:6:y:1999:i:2:p:193-224. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.