Wednesday also was the day that online retail giant Amazon promised it would begin voluntarily collecting taxes on sales in Wyoming. But most online businesses still don’t pay, to the disadvantage of shops on Main Street and others with a physical presence in the state.
“We’re a state made of relatively small towns. We want to make sure those towns continue to thrive and do well,” said Mead.
Complicating the issue, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that states may not collect from businesses not physically located within their borders.
Under the bill, anybody outside Wyoming who does more than 200 transactions or $100,000 in sales in the state annually must pay sales tax. The Wyoming Department of Revenue can take those who don’t pay to court to collect.
