One company says collecting sales tax is not onerous for online retailers

With Congress considering bills to extend the moratorium on online sales tax, esalestax.com offers a package that calculates the sales tax due and is not a financial burden to retailers. The company says its dial-up service will calculate in seconds any sales tax due in the 7,000 plus U.S. tax jurisdictions for as much as 12 cents per transaction. The cost drops as low as 8 cents when the level of transactions exceeds 10,000 per month. Esalestax is one of the programs being tested by the Streamline Sales Tax Project, a 29-state initiative to develop a unified sales tax code. North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kansas are participating in a pilot project to test a unified tax code. As many as 39 other states are attending meetings and watching the project's progress, says Shawn Fahey, vice president of business development for esalestax.com.