Worse yet, I buy something in Illinois and drive back to Oklahoma --- do I pay sales tax every time I exit the freeway?
I know you mean every time a good is shipped to an end user in your City. However, Amazon has no physical presence in Oklahoma, it therefore is not subject to the Oklahoma's jurisdictional power to tax. You could change that tax law, and some have - the effect of which is wide open to debate.
However - it should be noted that everyone still OWES tax on the goods they buy from Amazon. The OTC even had an ad campaign about the elephant in the room a while back. That didn't solve the problem?
http://www.cnet.com/news/confused-about-online-sales-taxes-youre-not-alone/And who cares anyway. We are, as a state, short $1,000,000,000.00. Many of our counties and cities are short on funds too. So lets call it $1,500,000,000 as a total shortfall, which is likely conservative.
Amazon has about $42 Billion in total US sales. Back out digital content, prime memberships, and other items that may not be subject t tax - and there is still about $35 B in sales. Oklahoma is probably below average as far as Amazon sales is concerned (rural, poorer, lower education, less tech driven) - but lets asign the $100 per person average. 3.9 Million Oklahomans = $390,000,000 in Amazon sales.
4.5% State + 5.5% to be generous and make easy math = 10% sales tax.
WOOHOO! We've solved 4% of our budget problem.Red herring. Lets move on.
