Articles by Marvin Kirsner

Both Houses of the Texas legislature have passed a bill that legislatively repeals a controversial regulation that has caused a great deal of concern to e-commerce vendors and to Web hosting companies. A state can only require a company to collect its sales tax if the company has a substantial physical presence ("nexus") in the state, because of ...

The Colorado Department of Revenue has relaxed a first-in-the-nation information reporting requirement for sales by Internet vendors to customers in Colorado The new legislation, adopted earlier this year, requires etailers that have more than US$100,000 in sales to Colorado customers to notify all customers of their obligation to pay use tax to th...

Last month, the E-Commerce Times published a two-part series on the tax controversies being fought around the U.S. by online travel companies (OTCs) such as Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Pricelineand Travelocity. Part 1 describes the e-commerce tax landscape and delves into the reasons all players are not equal.Part 2 explores some of the court cas...

Part 1 of this two-part series describes the e-commerce tax landscape and delves into the reasons all players are not equal Many local governments have initiated class action lawsuits in an effort to compel the collection of sales taxes on hotel room markups....

On the front line of the e-commerce tax are online travel companies, or OTCs, such as Expedia, Hotels.com, PricelineTravelocity and Orbitz. The issue is whether the OTCs should be collecting hotel room occupancy taxes on the difference in the price between what the OTC pays the hotel operator and the amount that customer pays to the OTC. For example, assume that an OTC in a jurisdiction with a 10 percent hotel room tax pays a hotel US$100 for a room night and then charges its customer $150. The OTC pays $10 in room taxes -- but must the OTC collect a 10 percent room tax on the $50 markup? Increasingly, local tax authorities are saying that the additional tax must be paid.