Even the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has advocated privatization of everything from adoption services to airports, thinks the NGA plan goes too far. Thierer's main concern is maintaining taxpayer privacy in a system where private parties know what people are buying, where they live, and what their credit-card number is. In these places, pegging exactly which tax district a shopper and her computer are in would be no easy task. Spelling errors and other glitches could easily muck things up. A bigger problem is that no two states share the same tax base, with different states exempting different products from the sales tax.
Unique rules abound.
In New Jersey, clothing is completely tax-exempt. Then there is the question of what constitutes clothing. It's difficult writing software that understands whether a scarf is for decorative purposes and is taxable, or if it's clothing intended for warmth and is tax-free. A diligently programmed software package could handle this. But state and local officials are coming to understand that they need to simplify and harmonize their sales taxes.