Technology

You still paid sales tax when you bought a used game from GameStop. That's the entire point. You but software in a store and you paid sales tax because a sale happens in California.

You buy the SAME thing online in the state of California and you pay no sales tax. A sale still happened, money exchanged hands. A general sales tax should not care about what the good is.

The entire point of a general sales tax is that it applies to any sale, regardless of context. That's why there are exceptions that cut certain things out of the generality. Not a list that it only applies to.

So either software needs to actually collect sales tax correctly for transactions done in the state of California or software as a category needs to be exempt like online platforms.

It makes less sense to give an entire category such as software and exemption versus actually just enforcing sales tax equally and fairly in the state of California. These businesses are operating with license in the state in making sales by its laws. They should follow them.

Hell Even if you in California buy something from some place outside of California, including internationally while sales tax may not be collected at time of purchase, you are still typically on the hook for the sales tax. It's just done on receipt instead of on purchase.

Online platforms have been basically skirting the law since their inception. At some point there needs to be a reckoning. Are all online purchases just exempt? Should things that are sold in stores that are only available for download like f****** CD keys, should those be exempt? At what point do the sales tax laws, regulations and things need to be updated to reconcile? The fact that for the last 20 years no one has been following the law because there is just no clear law around the circumstances. Instead it's all just a hodgepodge of people, just kind of doing f****** whatever.