The fact that there was a time when you did not have to pay sales tax should be seen as a gift, if there is one thing that seems to be a certainty over the long run it is that if there is a flow of money sooner or later it will be taxed.
I manage operations for a small brand that operates both as an online business (recent venture) and brick & mortar (2 stores, 2 different states). It seems that this would help us by taxing us more and increasing our IT costs in terms of implementation? If you are operating a small business (retailers,service provider) in this day and age - it is almost a necessity to have some online presence.
With the existence of simple ecommerce tools like shopify and bigcommerce at the hands of traditional businesses making entry simple - added restrictions may deter these brick & mortar businesses from entering the online space at all.
Also, you're kindof proving my point by stating that these new policies may deter brick & mortar businesses from entering the online space. A brick & mortar business by definition doesn't have an e-commerce presence. Ones that do have a hybrid business model. For those, there's an interesting dynamic that management will face that's a close reflection of what the greater market will have to deal with, i.e., which side of the business to invest in. But anyways, if you admit that brick & mortar businesses will be deterred from moving to e-commerce, then you're admitting that the brick & mortal model is more competitive under the new tax regime.
This is entirely dependent on which part of the supply chain has the fiercest competition. Sometimes consumers get the economic profit and pay cost (commodities) and sometimes the producers do (monopolies, who already charge what the market will bear)
Which is the source of much of the opposition: Reps from sales tax-free states oppose it because the current regime encourages internet-based retailers to locate operations in those states, an incentive which will be removed if states with sales taxes can apply them to sales from vendors in sales-tax-free states.