I am not familiar with U.S. Supreme Court rulings on this subject, but I do not oppose paying sales tax on Internet purchases as long as they are at the correct rate – not too high and not too low. This keeps local merchants from being at an unfair disadvantage. But so-called use taxes are a pain to keep up with and compute – even for those who attempt to comply with them. And how does one get credit when the Internet seller has charged too much sales tax? And compute the marginal difference when the seller has charged too little? When a large number of small Internet purchases are involved, record-keeping burdens are unreasonable, and one needs to hire a CPA to compute use tax. That’s why use tax compliance rates are low.

If our legislators wish to collect the correct amount of sales taxes on Internet purchases, I hope they can think up a way to do that. I’m not smart enough to do so.

Richard H. Ruth

Durango