Contents

• Executive Summary 3
• Introduction 4
• Online Shopping 4
• Customers 5
• Payment and Delivery of Goods and Services 5
• Online Shopping Vs. Physical shopping 5
• The Controversy of Internet Taxation 7
• Reasons opposing the imposition of Taxes on Internet Sales 9
• Reasons supporting the imposition of Taxes on Internet sales 10
• Laws on Internet Taxation 11
• Internet Freedom Act 11
• Internet Tax Non-Discrimination Act 11
• Main Street Fairness Act 12
• Ways to impose tax on internet shopping 13
• Effects of internet tax imposition 14
• Conclusion 15
• Bibliography 16

Description

E-Commerce can be defined as all the transactions that take place over the internet. The growing use of internet over the years has offered people with the most convenient means of shopping online without travelling to the distant physical retailing stores. The industry has been growing since 1992 when the Supreme Court in the United States exempted sales tax on the remote businesses that does not have any physical presence in the state like stores or warehouses, offering goods and services to the people through internet or catalog sales.
Amazon and EBay are the biggest internet-based retailing companies that started operating in 1995 and 1996 respectively. The businesses grew at an exceptional with people not requiring paying sales tax on their purchases compared to the physical buying activities in the brick and mortar stores. This initially commenced a controversial issue on whether the internet sales should be taxed or not as the physical stores were claiming their disadvantage over the internet-based retailing companies.
The state government of United States laid down many internet taxation laws regarding this but still problems are persisting in many states of the United States.