Oregon Public Broadcasting

One of the attractions for Washington and Idaho residents to shop from catalogs or online is the frequent absence of sales tax.  That’s starting to change for Washingtonians.  Correspondent Tom Banse has more.

Washington State is finally seeing results from a long-running effort to collect tax from out-of-state mail-order retailers.

Department of Revenue spokesman Mike Gowrylow says Washington banded together with 21 other states to pressure national retailers.

Mike Gowrylow: “What this national agreement does is provide amnesty to some of these companies if they voluntarily agree to begin collecting the tax. In other words, we won’t ding them for tax they should have collected in the past, which could be substantial.”

Gowrylow says neither side wants to make public the names of the thousand or so retailers that are going to start charging sales tax.  “Competitive reasons” is the excuse, since the cooperators represent but a small fraction of all online stores.

In Idaho, tax-phobic legislators have kept Idaho out of the so-called Streamlined Sales Tax Project.

Washington state and its counties hope to gain about $50 million a year from this by 2009.

Online:

Streamlined Sales Tax Project