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krw

In article ,
am says...

snip

I worked in retail automation for many years and calculating sales tax
is a nightmare. There are options for counties and cities to collect
sales tax as well, and they can use different calculations and
different (often weird) rounding for each of those. It's a mess to
calculate and some states allow the tax to be based on where you live
in the state (provided it's the same state), not where the store is
located. Mostly that's ignored unless you get a big ticket item and
live in a place within the state that has a much lower tax rate. And
this is just if you physically go to the store.

Yes, and some people have an address in one town but reside in
another with a different tax rate.

If you order through mail/phone/internet from a store in another state
AND have it delivered to an address in your state, then you might not
be charged sales tax at all, depending on whether the merchant you
ordered from has a physical business presence anywhere in your state,
even though the location in your state never had anything to do with
the order. In the case where they aren't charged sales tax for
something mail/phone/internet ordered from another state, the consumer
is technically supposed to fill out a form and pay sales tax on it
directly to their own state, which rarely happens in reality. Of
course, if you physically visit a store in another state to order or
pickup the item, then you pay the other states tax for that store
location. Sales tax is a mess here in the US.

Mess indeed, but one I hope is never "fixed".

--
Keith