The Supreme Court made an important ruling for all you online-shopaholics out there. The physical presence rule for sales tax has been overturned, and this means you could end up spending even more money on all your online purchases.
Before June 21st, 2018, states could only require stores with physical locations to impose state sales taxes. This meant that online retailers (i.e. Amazon and Etsy) did not have to charge you this additional fee. States soon realized they were losing billions of dollars in tax revenue because of this rule.
In the case of South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc., the ruling came out that individual states can now create their own legislation requiring e-commerce stores to impose additional sales taxes. The case was a 5-4 victory that ended up being a huge win for state governments, as they could pull up to an additional 30 billion dollars in tax revenue annually with this change.
Stocks in online retailers dropped a full percent after this announcement was made, so be on the lookout for your online purchases becoming more expensive, and don’t blame the online stores, as they have no choice but to abide by this new law. If you are someone who purchases everything online due to convenience, you might want to rethink your shopping strategies.
