It's that massive change that's lit a fire under advocates for the position that states should be allowed to require an online merchant with no physical presence in a state to collect sales taxes from their customers on behalf of it. While online consumers have always been required to pay taxes to their states on online purchases, it's a requirement that’s mostly been honored in its breach – and lacking a means to get internet customers to cough up those taxes, financially stretched states are coming up short on scads of revenue.

While there's general agreement on many points, how to get such taxes into state coffers has become a matter of heated controversy. One of the biggest sticking points is the potentially huge administrative workload for online retailers of having to comply with the rules of many of the nation's nearly 10,000 sales tax jurisdictions.

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