Enzi and Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., have introduced the Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act, which would give all businesses the same sales-tax collection responsibility.

"Simply put, if Congress continues to allow remote sales taxes to go uncollected and electronic commerce continues to grow as predicted, other taxes, such as income or property taxes, will have to be increased to offset the lost revenue to state and local governments. I want to avoid that," Enzi said.

An undue burden?

Although the bills show no sign of passing this session, with the lawmakers still lining up co-sponsors and educating others in Congress about the issue, Hiatt, along with eBay — which has 2,500 top sellers in Utah alone — and another Utah-based online business, Overstock.com, want the laws to stay the way they are. But big retailers like Target and Wal-Mart want products sold in a "brick and mortar" store to be taxed the same as those sold via the Internet or mail catalogs.

"This is certainly not the time to impose a major new tax burden on Internet vendors working to implement successful new business models, nor is it wise macroeconomic policy to impose what is effectively a tax increase on American consumers," according to eBay's position statement on the bill.

Enzi's bill would only apply to businesses making $5 million in sales or more. Hiatt's online business does about $2 million in sales, but he says he is still against the bill, because it is a "slippery slope" in how the new rules could trickle down to smaller business. Plus, if his sales increase, he doesn't want to be penalized for making more money.

Hiatt started his online journey in 1999, when he bought an old hand-held electronic football game for $2 at a thrift store. He put it on eBay, and it ended up selling for $78. He started looking around the house for other things to sell, and later, he learned how to buy things wholesale and became a distributor.

He quit his regular job and went to his online business full time in 2003. The Hiatts are platinum power sellers on eBay, meaning they sell $150,000 a month and have good feedback from people who have purchased items from them.

Hiatt said part of the problem for online businesses in applying sales tax is there are 7,500 different tax jurisdictions across the United States. Each one can define items — and tax them — differently.

Those businesses would face a lot of paperwork, particularly in filling out tax returns for all the states where customers bought items, tracking the taxes and applying them correctly.