Senate Committee Approves Plan for Internet Sales Tax Collection

A plan designed to help North Carolina collect sales taxes on Internet purchases has cleared a Senate committee.

Analysts say that without such a plan, the state stands to lose 450 million dollars a year in uncollected taxes from Internet and catalogue sales by 2003.

The model legislation would not require Internet vendors to collect sales tax for the state. Instead, it would make the state's sales tax laws more uniform.

That would eventually allow the taxes to be collected once other states also participating in the project pass similar laws and Congress gives its O.K.

Now, most big Internet retailers voluntarily collect sales taxes for the states.

But smaller vendors leave it to the buyers to pay the required taxes to the states.