"Road-kill on the information superhigh-way." According to one sage, that is the likely fate of America's sales tax. It is possible. Buy a novel from your local Manhattan bookstore, and you will pay a combined state and city sales tax of 8.25%. Purchase the same book over the Internet from Amazon.com, and there will be no tax to pay. This advantage is doing wonders for e-retailers in their battle against traditional high-street stores. If e-commerce grows as big as some predict, this could blow a large hole in tax revenues. In America, sales tax is levied at the state and local rather than the national level, and many state governors are getting nervous about the potential loss of yield from a tax that currently supplies around half of state and local-government revenues. Most other countries have different arrangements, but face many of the same issues.
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