• Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - February - 2018 Issue

U.S. Supreme Court Will Again Consider Allowing States to Require Out-of-State Retailers to Collect Their Sales Taxes

The happy Wayfair customers may not be so happy anymore if they have to pay sales tax (image from Wayfair Ad.).

The ability of states to require out-of-state retailers, which would include most rare and antiquarian booksellers, to collect their sales taxes will again come before the United States Supreme Court. Twice before, the Supreme Court has shot down such attempts by the states, but while the Court rarely reverses its past decisions, don't count on the mail order and internet retailers prevailing again. There are reasons to believe the third time may be a charm for the state taxing authorities and their allies, the retailers who sell from local stores.

 

Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court, in a case known as Nat'l Bellas Hess, determined that states were not legally able to require out-of-state sellers to collect their sales tax on items they sold and shipped to customers in their state. There were obvious issues of the extreme difficulty in retailers trying to keep track of all the state and local entities on whose behalf they would have to collect the right amount of tax and make payments thereto. However, inconvenience is not a constitutional issue. Overriding this issue is the Commerce Clause of the U. S. Constitution. It gives exclusive authority to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. Therefore, if the out-of-state company had some sort of physical presence, or "nexus" within the state, such as a store, warehouse, or sales office, they became an instate retailer who could be compelled to collect sales taxes, even if the goods were shipped from afar. That was sufficient to make that retailer one of the state's own. However, without such "nexus," the retailer could not be required to collect sales taxes. That is why you will often see a mail order or internet seller say to add sales tax only if you live in one or more specific states. Those state(s) have nexus.

 

Twenty-five years later, the Supreme Court revisited the situation in a case known as Quill. The Court reaffirmed the Bellas Hess ruling, though in a reluctant manner. It took note of the increasing significance of mail order sales and lost sales tax revenue, but the Court is loathe to overturn in its own precedents. However, it more or less invited Congress to enact legislation to enable states to require out-of-state retailers to collect their sales tax. Since they had ruled that interstate commerce was in the sole purview of the federal government, it implied the federal government could enact legislation authorizing the states to demand their sales taxes be collected on goods sold in interstate commerce.

 

That was 1992. A lot has happened since then. The internet was invented. Untaxed sales have skyrocketed since the days when only traditional catalogue mail order was an issue. Amazon came and grew to become the nation's largest retailer. However, Amazon began opening warehouses, then stores, acquiring nexus in many states, and finally bent to pressure and began collecting taxes for sales in all states. Amazon itself is no longer an issue, but many other large internet sellers, and almost all small ones, do not collect sales taxes. That includes smaller, independent retailers who sell through Amazon, about half of the sales on Amazon's website.

 

Meanwhile, some U. S. legislators attempted to take up the Supreme Court's suggestion by proposing bills to provide the necessary federal authorization for states to collect sales taxes. Twenty-five years later, none of them have gone anywhere. The states' governors and legislatures have promoted these bills, but those states' federal senators and representatives have declined to pass them. No one wants to go on record as raising their constituents' taxes. None of these bills ever made it to a vote.

 

Now, something else has happened to make it more likely the Supreme Court will reverse itself. Justice Kennedy, a "no" vote in 1992, who reluctantly voted to uphold precedent, has all but proclaimed he will vote the other way this time around. The latest justice, Neil Gorsuch, has also advocated a reversal of the precedent. And now, the Supreme Court has agreed to decide the issue once again, in a case labeled South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. Wayfair may have just what the states need.

 

South Dakota initiated a challenge to Quill by passing a law that ran in its face, demanding out-of-state retailers collect their sales taxes. When Wayfair, Overstock, and New Egg refused, the state sued them. The case went to the South Dakota Supreme Court which ruled for the online retailers, as expected. The South Dakota court was sympathetic to the state, but ruled that it had no choice but to uphold the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U. S. Supreme Court in its earlier decision. That set up what South Dakota wanted, a chance to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and try to convince it to reverse that earlier decision. The U.S. Supreme Court declines to even listen to most appeals. It is already a warning sign to those who wish internet sales to remain mostly sales tax-free that the court has agreed to hear the case anew.

 

South Dakota argues that the ability of online retailers to avoid collecting sales taxes has a devastating effect on state revenues, harms local retailers that are at a competitive disadvantage because they do have to collect them, and questions whether the whole Bellas Hess/Quill precedent is good law in the first place. The lost tax revenue, the state argues, forces states to raise sales taxes even higher to make up for it, making local retailers even less competitive. Perhaps, but it should be noted that five states, Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon, collect no sales taxes at all, and yet somehow manage to survive. There are other taxes available and widely used, such as income, property, utility, business, and various fees. The federal government, with its enormous budget, does not impose a sales tax.

 

The amount of money lost is not insignificant. South Dakota referenced a study that estimates the states will lose $33.9 billion in revenue due to uncollected sales taxes in 2018, $211 billion from 2018-2022. Of course, we all know who will have to pay that lost revenue, which is to say this is effectively a large tax increase.

 

South Dakota has been joined by 34 other states in asking the Supreme Court to overturn its old decision. That's 35 out of 50 states, and yet the federal legislators from those same states, who could reverse the effect of that decision by simply passing a bill, adamantly refuse to do so. That is a contradiction. What is the will of the people?

 

We should note one other danger in the court overturning this long-running precedent, rather than allowing the states, through their elected representatives in Washington, to make this decision. The unpassed bills in Washington, and the South Dakota legislation, all provide an exemption for smaller retailers. Some also provide for a unified collection system. The assumption is that large retailers will have access to computer software programs that make the assessment and collection of all of these taxes easy, something impossible in the old mail order days. South Dakota exempts retailers with either less than $100,000 in sales or fewer than 200 transactions in the state per year from collecting their taxes. However, if the U.S. Supreme Court drops the constitutional bar to states requiring out-of-staters from having to collect these taxes, there will be no limits on what a state can impose. It will be each state's constitutional right to place whatever demands it wants on out-of-state sellers.

 

The Wayfair case is expected to be heard by the court in April, with a decision to come down in June.


Posted On: 2018-02-01 18:23
User Name: davereis

So, assuming a reversal, would the state where the item originates also tax the seller? If so, the sale would be taxed by two states. Is this constitutional?
If no to the above (IE- the sale only would be taxed in the buyer's state), the state where the buyer resides would make more money in those cross-state sales, but would lose money in cases where a seller in same state would selll to a buyer in another state.
Seems legally dubious in the first case, and a waste of time (and possibly an overall loss for some states) in the latter. And a headache for all!


Posted On: 2018-02-01 22:48
User Name: ae244155

Only the state to which the item is shipped would apply sales tax. Just as now, if a dealer ships an item to an out-of-state location, his home state will not collect sales tax. The difference is the buyer's home state will now collect sales tax, or more exactly, the seller will have to collect sales tax on behalf of that other state, and send it to that state. Hopefully, there will be software available that will compute all this for the seller, and if the states are helpful, provide one central location to which dealers can make payment. However, if the Supreme Court reverses itself, there is no guarantee that the states will make the collecting and remitting process easier on dealers.


Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD

Article Search

Archived Articles

Ask Questions