Online Sales Tax Survey: Online Retailers Could Lose Sales Over Tax Issue

Congress is currently debating over whether consumers should be charged sales tax for online purchases. Traditionally, the lack of sales tax has been one way that consumers could save money when shopping online. But would the change actually impact many buying decisions moving forward?

Online Shoppers

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 8% of respondents said that they do all of their shopping online. 24% said they do most of their shopping online. 32% said they do about half of their shopping online. 30% said they rarely shop online. And just 6% of consumers said that they never shop online.

Online Sales Tax

Of those who shop online at least sometimes, 33% said that the lack of sales tax has very much impacted their decision to shop online rather than in stores. 43% said that sales tax has somewhat impacted their online shopping decisions. And 24% of online shoppers said that sales tax has had nothing to do with their shopping decisions. But moving forward, will these opinions change? Or could online retailers lose business over the issue? 24% of online shoppers said that if online retailers begin collecting sales tax, it will have a very large impact on their online shopping decisions. 47% said that their shopping decisions may be somewhat impacted if retailers begin collecting sales tax. And 29% said their shopping habits won’t change at all based on online sales tax.

Congressional Support

But even though some don’t plan to change their shopping habits, just 4% of overall consumers said that they would definitely support Congress’s decision to have online retailers collect sales tax. 9% said they would probably support such a decision. 37% said they would probably not support it. And 50% of consumers said they would definitely not support Congress’s decision to have online retailers collect sales tax.You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: 8/1/12 Online Sales Tax Hearing from FlickrWhat do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on April 26 via AYTM’s online survey panel.