Sales taxes are added to all sorts of products, of which, this tax is usually applied only to the end user, which is the buyer of the product so being sold. The purpose of sales taxes in general, is to help the local as well as the State government to take in monies that will thereby be allocated for services on behalf of the community such as police and fire fighters, roads, parks, and other public services. The percentage amount of a particular sales tax so applied is legislated by that particular county and/or locality, as well as by the State the purchase is made in, which combined encompasses the entire sales tax so applied on a given sale. The amount of money collected via sales tax has a meaningful effect upon the budget of local communities and States, so sales taxes are probably not going to go away anytime soon.
However, while there are exceptions on how sales tax is applied; the general rule is if a business is physically located within a particular State and community, the prevailing rate of that State and relevant community, is the sales tax so charged; whereas businesses that do not have a physical presence within that State and community, are exempt from having to collect or to charge sales tax, under the ostensible reason that because they are not physically part of the community, that they need not pay to support such.
Yet, from a logical basis, a strong argument could be made that those businesses that are local to that community and State, should be allowed to charge a lower sales tax as opposed to those businesses that are out-of-State that thereby charge no sales tax; for the rather obvious reason, that monies that circulate within the community and State, are beneficial to the residents of that State, whereas sales that are made to out-of-State businesses, are an example of monies that are leaving the State. That is to say, to give out-of-State businesses an advantage over local businesses seems to be rewarding the wrong business, for where the monies that consumers spend goes to, most definitely matters, and those businesses that must collect a sales tax, are at a distinct competitive disadvantage to all those other businesses that do not.
This so signifies, that local businesses rather than having to collect sales taxes at their current rate, should have those rates curtailed, and any and all businesses that are non-local in status, should be mandated to have to collect sales taxes within that community and State, for the privileged of being able to sell within those communities, in which they have no physical presence and are providing no employment to those that live within those communities.
Basically, out-of-State enterprises should not be able to get a free ride upon States that they are not an integral part of, because they are in essence, extracting money from those residents, but not actually contributing to the good welfare and infrastructure of those residents. This signifies that local businesses should be accorded a price advantage by virtue of having to charge less in sales tax, than non-local businesses, because those that are not part of the community should not have a sales tax price advantage which allows them to more readily and to unfairly compete against those that are local to it.