Depends on the state. In WA and I'm pretty sure CA will TELL you what your used car is worth if what you paid doesn't meet their minimum amount. This is regardless if you got a good deal, bought a project, was part of private trade, etc. Also in WA, our recent transportation expansion included a car registration increase based on the value of the vehicle, when it was new....not the accepted depreciation schedule value (by an agency with tax authority that was not elected). This level of nonsense is only possible because vehicles taxes and fees can be enforced at time of required registration. I believe I read that CA is now tracking shipping invoices so the same nonsense can apply to other goods. There is no morality in taxation.

Now back to the main topic. As a small business owner who builds little gizmos in my garage for the pleasure of other car enthusiasts, I can tell you the overhead of tracking 40ish different taxing scenarios is crippling. Thankfully for me personally I don't think I will trip any limits in other states. But I can sure as shit tell you that I will do everything I can to stay below the thresholds. My prediction for the NIB pinball market is that as a consumer you will see your out of pocket costs jump from 1) your distributor enforcing the new sales tax collection 2) raised costs to deal with the burden of tracking, collecting and submitting taxes to each state they are sold. You should also expect to see less availability as people just say eff it, not worth selling machines to CA or WA or wherever it sucks the most. Thankfully there is a good NW distributor in OR, so that may be a couple more scenic drives a year. That is until the put up boarder crossing checks for goods transfer....

One question I still have is if the state limits on business entities or on individual business owners? What would stop an owner from setting up several individuals businesses that would not trip the minimums?

A side comment on our friends to the north...I sell quite a bit of my gizmos across the boarder. I would say 90% of the time I get the request to misrepresent the value of the goods on the custom form because Canadian customs and VAT (I think that's what it is?) is too high. That always make me chuckle.

This is a good topic that all US citizens should pay attention to. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors.

goddamn that's funny. Thank you for that.

"When does it start" is even trickier than that. Each state can decide when tripping the threshold requires state registration and tax collection. In some cases it is based on previous year's sales. Some cases it applies to current year sales. Sometimes it applies to previous OR current. So just because a state starts official enforcement April1, it could take some time for a distributor to trigger the threshold. Then again, it could have already tripped from sales last year and would apply immediately.

It's also fun to note that currently 3 states have a much lower threshold for notice and report law for business. That means in OK, PA, and WA if a business sells less than 200 items but more than $10k gross they are required to either collect tax or report on you to your state. That means the state has a record of things you are not voluntarily reporting use tax on. These were in place before this recent SCOTUS decision. So be prepared for nasty-grams in the mail.

The trade-in scenario is also interesting. If you only pay cash on $1500 of a NIB sale regardless of what the actual value of the item is, you should only have $1500 worth of taxes collected. Now when that distributor sells your used game for $5k, the next buyer pays the sales tax on that item. That's how I see it working. Tax is collected either way, but only for the cash value paid. That's how I would expect it to work. Although you should never take tax advice from an engineer