Bloomberg View: It’s Time to Start Taxing E-Commerce

Since the birth of the Internet, online retailers and consumers have guarded the tax-free click. Not having to collect state sales taxes has allowed digital stores to flourish. Shoppers have been able to find what they want in regular stores, only to order the same product online, tax-free.

Last year, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, retail e-commerce totaled $225 billion, an increase of almost 16 percent from 2011. Online purchases now account for 5.2 percent of total retail sales. The subsidy—worth about $23 billion today, according to Bloomberg News, and about $52 billion in unpaid state sales taxes since 2006—has helped nurture e-commerce through its startup, although that success came at the expense of brick-and-mortar rivals. Now that e-commerce has grown up, it isn’t necessary to keep coddling the industry.