And now the concern/hope is that it will never happen.

Utah had planned to invoke the key part of the so-called Streamlined Sales Tax this July. It would have required businesses to collect the sales tax where a company delivers a product, not where it sells it. But lawmakers during the recent general session pushed back the effective date to July 2006, the second time the deadline has been bumped.

That's good news for some small-business owners who worry the new collection method will make it more difficult to do business.

"I don't mind that it's been delayed, because it represents a very complicated situation for us," says Kurstin Lee, one of four owners of South Salt Lake's Wasatch Baskets & Gifts. "I just don't know quite how we could go about doing that. I know it would be extremely expensive."

Some of Utah's larger merchants, such as R.C. Willey, have prepared for the switch to point-of-delivery tax collection. But for smaller vendors, like Lee, the change could be tough.

The new method, when implemented, would require a business that delivers products or services to charge the local area's tax instead of the tax where the business it located. That means, for example, that if you buy a major purchase from R.C. Willey's Syracuse store - where the sales tax would be 6.5 percent - and have it delivered to Salt Lake County, you would pay a 6.6 percent tax.

Lee, who this week was processing an order for 2,000 gift baskets to be sent all over, worries it will take too much time to figure out the sales tax rate of all the locations to which she ships.

"I agree with the concept, but there's got to be an easier way," says Lee. "And if there isn't, I don't want it to fall in our lap for us to deal with."

The concept, after all, is to create equality between Internet merchants, which do not have to collect taxes, and brick-and-mortar stores, most of which must collect taxes.

Sen. Lyle Hillyard, a Logan Republican and the Senate's budget boss, says it's important to implement the collection method as soon as its feasible. He says the Streamline Sales Tax will help prevent a national sales tax, which would hurt Utah's tax collection.

It also would help Utah businesses from losing customers to online merchants.

For example, he says, a consumer could visit a local store, check out a high-priced electronic item, ask questions of a salesman and then go online to buy the item without paying sales tax or helping the local merchant.

The business-backed Utah Taxpayers Association supports the Streamlined Sales Tax with conditions, such as that it not be onerous to companies and it wouldn't raise taxes, according to Vice President Mike Jerman. He says he hopes the tax will be implemented next year because the new method would treat "local sellers and remote sellers the same."

tburr@sltrib.com