Justices split on taxing internet sales

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court took up a huge sales-tax case Tuesday with the expectation that it is ready to bring online shopping under the same rules that apply to ordinary retailers.

But that outcome was less certain after Tuesday’s arguments. The justices were clearly divided, but in unusual coalitions of conservatives and liberals.

One side said Congress, not the courts, should set the rules for taxing interstate commerce.

At issue is a 1992 ruling involving mail-order catalogs, when the justices found that states may not require out-of-state mailers to collect sales taxes on behalf of their residents.

Now, in the era of online shopping, that decision in Quill v. North Dakota is said to cost states and municipalities between $8 billion and $13 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan said Congress is better suited to devise a new system. Roberts worried that requiring people who run their own websites to collect sales taxes for an estimated 12,000 taxing jurisdictions across the nation would be overly burdensome. There needs to be a minimum threshold, he said.

Kagan added, “Congress can craft a compromise in a way that we cannot.”

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she is worried that “overturning precedents will create a massive amount of lawsuits,” and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it should not be left to Congress to grapple with the court’s previous decision. “If time and changing conditions have rendered (the Quill decision) obsolete, why should the court say: ‘Well, we’ll let Congress fix it?’”

Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed that the Quill ruling was “incorrect” and should be overruled. And Justice Neil Gorsuch said it was unfair to traditional retailers who must collect sales taxes. “Why should this court favor a particular business model that relies not on brick and mortar but on mail order?” he asked.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who could hold the deciding vote, did not signal he was leaning one way or the other.

The case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, began when the state passed a law requiring retailers who do more than $100,000 worth of business there to collect its 4.5 percent sales tax, even if they were located in other states. Predictably, the law was struck down as unconstitutional based on the Quill decision.

But the high court then voted to hear the state’s argument that the Quill decision should be overruled.

For online shoppers, the court’s decision could mean higher prices, although many large internet sellers, including Amazon, already have been collecting sales taxes in recent years.

In another action Tuesday, the justices struck down a law that allowed the government to deport some immigrants who commit serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. The decision will limit the Trump administration’s efforts to deport people convicted of some kinds of crimes.

The vote was 5-4, with Justice Gorsuch joining the court’s four more-liberal members to form a bare majority, which was a first. Gorsuch wrote that the law crossed a constitutional line.

‘‘Vague laws,’’ he wrote, ‘‘invite arbitrary power.’’