Mark Pierce said:

In recent years California has asked income-tax filers to

self-report out-of-state purchases and to pay sales tax on them. I
don't consider that a sales tax because in my mind a sales tax is on
the seller (who usually has itemized it on the purchaser's invoice.)
In the case of out of state purchases where the buyer remits payment
directly to the state. it is a purchase tax.

Mark,

If you check, I think that you will find that the state in question
considers the sales tax in question to be an excise tax; i.e., a tax
upon the "priviledge of buying." The tax is collected by the seller
but is to be paid by the buyer. A sales tax is a tax on the buyer.
If that is what you mean by a "purchase tax", then so be it.

If the seller fails to collect the sales tax or, if as is the case in
Oregon where there is no sales tax and thus none is paid at the time
of the initial sale, a new tax is then typically imposed by the state
where the buyer is resident and that state calls it a "use tax" (also
an excise tax - this time it is on the "priviledge of owning". Many
of you never knew that you had all those "privileges", or that they
were taxable, did you? Either way you cut it, it is a tax
nonetheless. And, you have yet to meet a state that didn't like to
tax everything it could.

As Doc Denny says, "Some may be now actually quite
thankful to know how to grab this chance to easily pay more to their
struggling grateful governments."

Right!!!

Certainly, the State of Washington grabs every dollar it can. The
State of Washington has both a sales tax *and* a use tax.

Roger J Miener
at Tacoma WA USA