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Designing Interstate Institutions: The Example Of The Streamlined Sales And Use Tax Agreement, Brian Galle

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article presents a case study in designing cooperative interstate institutions. It takes as its subject the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement ("SSUTA"), a recently-developed compact among the States now awaiting congressional ratification. The SSUTA's primary goal is to bring uniformity to the field of state and local sales taxation, a regime in which multi-jurisdictional sellers now confront thousands of different sets of rules. I predict here that the SSUTA as currently designed is unlikely to accomplish that goal, and attempt to suggest possible amendments that could improve its expected performance. From these efforts I extract larger lessons about …