Congress is getting involved in the vexatious dispute over Amazon's refusal to collect state taxes.
On Friday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced legislation that would require Internet-only retailers to add sales taxes to customers' bills, just as their competitors with bricks-and-mortar stores do. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) plans to introduce a similar measure in the House.
The congressional effort is aimed at closing a legal loophole created by a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that freed online and catalog sellers from the obligation of collecting sales taxes if their businesses had no physical presence in the state where a buyer lives.
Excerpt taken from, Congress takes up Amazon sales tax issue, by Marc Lifsher, reporting for the Los Angeles Times.
