Saturday, May 1, 2004

Gary Cornia (BYU), David Sjoquist (Georgia State) & Lawrence Walters (George Mason) have posted Sales and Use Tax Simplification and Voluntary Compliance on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Because of difficulties collecting sales taxes on Internet sales, several states have engaged in an effort (the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, SSTP) to simplify their sales tax systems. One hope among SSTP proponents is that a simplified system will result in Internet vendors voluntarily collecting the sales tax.

We address two issues:

– Will states adopt the extensive reforms proposed by the SSTP?

– Will vendors voluntarily collect the sales tax?

We argue that states are unlikely to adopt extensive reforms, but if they did, many vendors would voluntarily collect sales taxes.