taxes on out of state purchases. south dakota argues allowing interstate sales taxes could bring billions of dollars of revenue to states. nbc s pete thomas joins me from outside the courtroom. this battle has been going on for decades. what arguments make this case different and this is not president trump taking a swipe at amazon. and we need to make that abundantly clear. no, no, this was all a battle recently started by south dakota. it was about 25 years ago the supreme court said if you re a company in one state and you sell something to somebody in another state, you don t have to charge the sales tax unless your company has some physical presence there, retail store, a warehouse or something like that. it was a case involving catalog companies and what the supreme court said is, you know, catalog companies are just a little bit of all retail sales and with 6,000 different tax rates around the country, it s just too complicated to figure them out.
amazon.com, and you live in washington, where amazon does have a warehouse, you currently do have to pay sales tax. if you live in illinois, though, you do not. so if this bill passes, online retailers will be forced to collect sales tax across the board. by the way, also, shoppers are technically supposed to pay sales tax by declaring their purchases on their tax return, but, of course, most people do not do this. this bill intends to level out the playing field. there are some exemptions. if you re lucky enough to live in a state where that doesn t have sales tax, for example, this will not apply. and businesses making less than $1 million in out of state purchases will also be exempt. wolf? only five states don t have any sales tax. some people are saying this could be a tough law to put into place, zain. why is it so tricky? reporter: well, it is tricky because there are so many different tax rates. so critics are arguing it would be a huge tax burden or burden on small busin
100,000 out of state purchases as if they were maine from distributors. newman that s brilliant. dave: i don t see that as a scheme. using your head. is that wrong, isn t that a way to make a little money and recycle, doing good for the in the state where you buy it. in the environment. okay, i don t get it. remember last wook you were so cold across areas of the south and 65 in oklahoma city and you ll take it after being below zero on thursday morning and a big warm-up and see the sunshine here across areas of the south as well and clear skies at least. and the cloud cover is across the parts of the north and a clipper system across the parts of the great lakes and northern parts of the plains and that s the next system that s going to develop as well and be prepared, very windy conditions across the northern plains in the northern rockies today. maybe some winds around 50 miles per hour is going to