> Opening a retail store in a state is not the same as opening a website people in that state can access. There's no conscious decision, or deployment of capital to that state.
Yes, its much more expensive to open a retail store, and involves some contribution to the local economy to operate it, so the two are not equivalent.
On the other hand, they are similar in that each is a conscious decision to conduct business with people in the State, and there is no rational reason to favor remote business.
Neither should be favored. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states walks into our retail store, we still only have to collect a single sales tax and remit it to a single entity. If a customer that lives in each of the 50 states logs into our online store, we have to collect 50 sales taxes and remit them to 50 entities. That's a law that favors retail store owners over online sellers. A law with the same practical effects could be written that favors neither by having a single federally-operated sales tax that's distributed to the states according to the relative sales volume to residents of those states.
Yes, its much more expensive to open a retail store, and involves some contribution to the local economy to operate it, so the two are not equivalent.
On the other hand, they are similar in that each is a conscious decision to conduct business with people in the State, and there is no rational reason to favor remote business.