frankly I think this is b.s., doesn't interstate commerce fall under federal jurisdiction anyways?
why should internet companies have to deal with this B.S. for all 50 states?
Frankly i think this is just a way for them to soften everyone up for an internet sales tax. "Oh you don't like filing 50 different tax forms? Well good news, we now have an internet sales tax of 3%"
The point is that if part of your business is in the same state as the customer, it's not interstate. This is hardly a new rule. Mail order catalogs have extracted sales tax in states where they had warehouses since before there was an internet.
But someone still has to define what it means to have "part of your business" in a state. You own fixed property that's located there? One of your employees works from home and lives there? One of your employees worked 2 hours while waiting at an airport in that state? Someone rents something from you and takes it into that state? Your cloud provider keeps a backup facility in that state?
It seems like the definition of what it means for a business to have nexus in a state (so, what business counts as "interstate") is a perfect thing for the feds to handle.
It's referred to as having 'minimum contact' with a state; it's not just for tax purposes, but would also matters for things like lawsuit jurisdiction and so forth. Here's a recent summary with good references that explains the basics: http://www.picpa.org/Content/41763.aspx
why should internet companies have to deal with this B.S. for all 50 states?
Frankly i think this is just a way for them to soften everyone up for an internet sales tax. "Oh you don't like filing 50 different tax forms? Well good news, we now have an internet sales tax of 3%"