Don't Pay Sales Tax!

You'd think that ordering from a catalog or the Internet would work the same way, but it doesn't. The reasons are complicated, but they boil down to the fact that the tax laws put an inordinate amount of value on physical presence. So if I live in Massachusetts and buy something from a mail-order store located in Vermont, Vermont can't charge me sales tax, because I'm not there. Similarly, Massachusetts can't collect sales tax from the store because it's in Vermont.