Several years ago, the emerging online commerce industry was a topic of discussion and debate over the issue of sales taxes, which are generally not charged on Internet purchases. A 1992 Supreme Court ruling determined that online retailers did not have to charge and collect sales tax, unless the retailer had a physical presence in the state. This was a competitive advantage for Internet retailers.

Congress also supported protecting online transactions from taxation, based on the argument that the emerging field of online commerce could be crippled by the complications and costs of charging and collecting sales taxes.

But today, the notion of protecting businesses in their infancy is no longer valid. Internet giant Amazon.com and many others are well-established, sophisticated and mature businesses. Thousands of smaller companies also do business over the Internet, and online sales have been growing at double-digit rates for nearly a decade.

Those growing sales, which have generally come at the expense of traditional brick-and-mortar stores on Main Street or at malls, also mean more and more lost sales tax revenue for states. And as the current economic recession drags on, nearly all states are desperate to find ways to balance their budgets. Capturing the sales tax revenue lost to online purchases is a reasonable target in the search for more revenue for state treasuries.

Defenders of the sales tax exemption can no longer argue that fragile online businesses need to be protected. The other major objection to online retailers collecting sales tax for Internet purchases has focused on the more than 7,000 taxing jurisdictions across the United States and the complications caused by many different tax rates and the rules on how different rates apply to different items.

To answer that objection, 22 states and many national retailers formed a group to simplify the way in which state or municipal sales taxes are applied and collected. The Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board has been working on a plan that it wants to see applied to all online purchases.

The SSTGB's sales tax simplification effort should be adopted as the law of the land to reduce or eliminate disparities between states. Even if it isn't, it seems clear that the computer programmers who created the electronic wizardry behind Amazon.com and other online retailers could easily create programs to handle the complexity of the current sales tax rules, even if they are needlessly confusing. Implementation of the simplified sales tax plan would only make their job easier.

Given the fact that online sales are expected to have hit $204 billion in 2008, or about 8 percent of all retail sales, the money lost by states and municipalities because of uncollected sales tax for Internet sales is estimated at close to $5 billion.

That alone is not nearly enough to plug the estimated $89 billion in budget shortfalls facing states this year, but it would help.

Beyond the arguments for capturing lost tax revenue for states, there is the issue of fairness.

Online stores have some built-in advantages, such as the convenience of being open for business 24 hours a day and reduced expenses of having minimal physical buildings to maintain. Being able to sell without collecting sales taxes should not be another advantage.

It is unfair for a person to be able to buy, for example, a CD from Amazon.com and pay no sales tax while the same person buying the same CD from a store on Main Street or the mall would pay sales tax.

After several years of debate, it is time to settle the sales tax avoidance issue. Online sales should be treated the same as in-person sales when it comes to sales tax. States need the revenues, brick-and-mortar stores deserve a more level playing field when competing with online retailers, and the technology to handle the tax collection, even if the tax simplification group is unable to have its program enacted, is manageable.

The sales tax advantage of online sales should be ended.