We are sharing what we hope is some GOOD NEWS today. There may be hope for relatively small sellers like myself to stay in business. Streamline 21 involves over 21 States who are attempting to have sales taxes collected by vendors even if they don't have an actual presence in that state. An example would be big corporations like Amazon who as far as I know sells into all 50 Sates. Our concern has always been if this tax went into effect that the smalll e-tailers like ourselves would collapse, because we don't have the time nor the budget to pay into States who have people that make purchases from us on our Website or on Facebook. Our only hope was for an exemption, and it appears that such an exemption currently does exist in the planning stages of implementing the Internet Sales Tax.

The following is a quote from the Streamline 21 data base. "Two major pieces of national sales tax legislation currently in the works are tied to the SST. The newly revised Marketplace Fairness Act of 2015, similar to a 2013 proposal, would broaden states’ authority to require remote sellers to collect sales tax, regardless of whether that business has a physical presence in those states. The legislation would only impact those out-of-state or remote sellers that have more than $1 million in gross annual sales, are not currently collecting sales tax, and are selling into states that are SST members or have instituted tax code streamlining efforts." End Quote.

We welcome with open arms this exemption, because otherwise thousands of small Mom and Pop operations like ours would cease to exist. To be clear we pay our local taxes. If we make a sale in Oklahoma we have to collect and pay the sales taxes due on those transactions. At the end of the year we also pay Federal and State Income Taxes. What we are not big enouogh to do is pay sales Taxes in 49 other States, so we hope this exemption is maintained, and we encourage all small e-tailers reading this to do everything you can to see that it does.

If you have questions on this issue please contact us at sales@oregonsunstonegem.com . If you wish to share a comment you can do that too.