“Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.” – Steve Miller

“The Jetsons” first episode aired in 1962. Google tells me promotional materials for the show’s premier places the Jetsons’ existence exactly 100 years into the future – 2062.

As scary as it sounds, we are only 37 years away from the Jetsons’ time, but we do not seem to be much closer to owning jetpacks, flying cars and robot maids than we were in 1962.

It’s not all bad, though. Any of us can get on the internet, click a few buttons, and have a shiny new gizmo delivered to our door stoop within a matter of days. Yet, convenience does not come without a few snags.

How to tax your Amazon purchase or DoorDash food delivery is emerging as one of those snags. Taxation was easier when you had to walk into a store to make a purchase. Your sales tax was based on your store’s location.

The calculus got more difficult when the purchase could instead be made from the Target website and shipped to you from an out-of-state distribution center.

The Alabama Legislature addressed this by passing the Simplified Sellers Use Tax a few years ago to deal with internet purchases. The SSUT was and is a good policy.

Instead of trying to force an out-of-state company to figure out the varying levels of local sales tax in every nook and cranny of the state, it set a flat 8 percent sales tax on all purchases made over the internet for companies based outside the state, and those companies pay the tax directly to the state.

Half of the SSUT revenue goes to the state government while the other half goes to local governments. The amount of tax money allocated to each specific local government is divvied up based on the population of those municipalities and counties.

Not everyone is happy with this set up, though. Many places in the state have a combined state and local sales tax above the 8-percent rate set by the SSUT. Elected officials in several cities say they are losing revenue under the SSUT formula despite the fact municipalities receive a higher share of the local tax revenue than county governments receive.

The cities’ complaint does not move me. There are other ways for municipalities to raise tax revenue, and sales taxes reaching 10 percent in several areas of the state is getting to be a bit much.

However, there is another part of the SSUT that cities claim costs them money that looks more legitimate. Only businesses with no physical presence in Alabama are supposed to operate using the SSUT.

Even so, retail corporations such as Walmart and Target, with many storefronts throughout the state, in addition to Amazon, which does not have storefronts but does have distribution centers in the state, are allowed to opt in to the lower SSUT tax rate for purchases made on their websites.

Now the city of Tuscaloosa is suing the state saying these retailers as well as delivery services, like a DoorDash, that have a large digital sales presence but also hold a physical presence in the state with employees, warehouses and vehicles should be subject to the full cost of local sales taxes and not the SSUT.

If Tuscaloosa’s lawsuit is successful, it could bring larger cities more tax revenue, but it would also complicate the process for companies in charging the correct sales tax based on where an order is placed or shipped.

I would also think people and businesses would try to game the system by trying to place and/or receive their orders in areas with the lowest local sales tax.

What should we do? I like to offer some kind of clear opinion in these columns, but I don’t have a surefire answer here.

A Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama study points out about half the states have joined a Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement which is designed to simplify somewhat the sales tax process for online retailers through the state government providing them assistance.

However, the PARCA study says joining this would require local governments in Alabama to turn over their power to administer and monitor local sales tax collection to the state government and does not fully solve the problems mentioned earlier.

This might be an improvement, but there are also more moving parts involved than a Rube Goldberg machine. That kind of legislation is usually hard to pass. Still, if we are approaching the era of the Jetsons, maybe complex solutions are the wave of the future.