>But Sen. Welch also noted that brick-and-mortar shops are also being used as display cases for products later bought online. "When a consumer can walk into a store, try out a product and then go home and buy it online without paying sales tax, Main Street businesses and downtowns lose," he said in a statement.

In my experience, sales tax does not account for the price difference, in most stuff I buy. What does account for it is the insane markup. Try buying an HDMI cable at bestbuy, then compare to the $1.50 at monoprice.com