Case Connections Raise Times??? For years, brickandmortar retailers have been complaining that online retailers (or e-tailers) have been exploiting an unfair advantage. Bill Hughes, an executive with the Retail Industry Leaders Association, says, \"For too long the Main Street retailers that are an integral part of their communities have faced tax rules that put them at a disadvantage to their out-of-state, online-only competitors.\" So what is this great advantage that e- tailers have? Sales taxes. Companies that do not have a physical presence in a state in which they sell are not required to collect sales tax on those purchases. Essentially, this means that every e-tailer has a natural 5 to 10 percent price advantage over brick-and-mortar stores. That advantage, however, may soon be disappearing. The United States Senate recently approved a bill that would require e-tailers with more than $1 million in sales to collect sales tax. This would represent an incredible win for brick-and-mortar retailers like Target, JCPenney, and Best Buy, who have been struggling for years to compete with online stores. By collecting sales tax, the e-tailers' automatic price advantage would be wiped out overnight, creating a more level playeld for all involved. Led by eBay, a large number of small, online vendors are protesting this law, and have spent $2 million to lobby against it. They claim that small e-tailers cannot afford the staff or infrastructure that collecting sales taxes makes necessary. They argue, correctly, that it is not as simple as entering gures into a formula. Rather, they need to keep a separate set of records for each stateand also each municipality and county with different tax ratesthat they make sales in, and then, either quarterly or monthly, file a return, again with each state, municipality, and county. HOW can a small company with a tiny staff, they argue, ever hope to keep up with the mountain of impending paperwork? Some small online sellers have already planned on reducing their inventory and sales to avoid the sales tax hurdle