The American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) and the catalog marketers and other remote merchants it represents are outraged that the Supreme Court today upended well-established precedent that has served the country well for more than half a century. “Small catalog and online retailers with little or no presence beyond their headquarters will be hurt the most – some will be forced out of business,” said ACMA President & Executive Director Hamilton Davison. “Rural Americans, shut ins and older consumers will be particularly hard hit by this decision.” By ruling against remote sellers and customers all across America, the High Court’s decision means companies who sell only 100 orders a year must now collect sales taxes for every South Dakota order. “This is a ridiculously small threshold,” Davison said. “A merchant might sell only 100 $20 orders and now be forced to comply with laws well outside its capacity and be subject to horrendous complexity.” Click Read More below for additional information.

Overstock.com Inc. is calling on Congress to pass legislation to simplify, or clarify, online sales tax collection in the wake of Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that enables states and local governments to force online retailers to collect sales taxes, even if they don’t have a physical presence, or nexus, in the state. “The U.S. Supreme Court has reshaped the interstate commerce landscape in a move that could impact small business innovation on the internet, which has been a driving force behind our nation’s economy for the last 15 years,” says Jonathan Johnson, an executive and board member at Overstock, No. 32 in the newly released Internet Retailer 2018 Top 1000, “The framers of the Constitution intended Congress to regulate interstate commerce by thoughtful legislation. To lessen the potential impact of today’s ruling on internet innovation, Congress can, and should, pass sound legislation allowing states to accomplish their aims while still permitting small internet business to thrive.” Click Read More below for additional information.

The 5-4 ruling Thursday is a win for states, who said they were losing out on billions of dollars annually under two decades-old Supreme Court decisions that impacted online sales tax collection. The high court ruled Thursday to overturn those decisions. They had resulted in some companies not collecting sales tax on every online purchase. The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a product to a state where it didn't have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn't have to collect the state's sales tax. Customers were generally supposed to pay the tax to the state themselves if they don't get charged it, but the vast majority didn't. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the previous decisions were flawed. Click Read More below for additional information.