The hidden $866 million tax

The Morning Call reports that the state (suprise, suprise!) ALWAYS comes out the winner with sales tax rounding. The 6% state sales tax can actually be as high as 11% on your purchases because of the state's rounding rules.

This tax scam...er...scheme provided the state with $25 MILLION more in 2006 than it should have otherwise collected.

The solution, of course, is to merely round to the nearest whole penny. But others, like Rep. Steil, have long pushed for major tax increase by taxing online purchases. So watch out, they may try to leverage the current sales tax thievery as a means to push for the so-called Streamlined Sales Tax. For more information on why this is a multi-million dollar bad idea, click here, here and here.