 Or at a tough day for the Dow anyway, it's a down day in a row, but retail stocks taking a hit on the Supreme Court right now, saying you cannot escape online taxes, even if you're not in the particular state where the online taxes are imposed. Bottom line is what it means is that the tax man will get you, no matter what. And for a lot of states it's going to open up potentially billions in revenue that they're going to quickly use to spend some dough. Charles Payne has been studying the whole phenomenon. What exactly did the Supreme Court say, Charles? Nail, before this there was a sort of de facto look the other way where online retailers could actually do business in a state and if they didn't have a physical presence there, well they didn't have to pay the state taxes. Nevertheless, a lot of the big names have, but I will tell you, this whole thing, this whole notion of this ruling today has been in the making for more than two decades. And even though we got it today, it's since shockwaves throughout the entire retail sector, but also to most people out there because most people want to figure out what it means for them. So, well we sent out someone to do a man and woman on the street to get the feel from the public. Take a listen. That's why I did a lot of my online shopping. Yeah. I knew I could avoid that tax. Sales tax is a good thing. Yeah. Right? Yeah. More tax, that's right. Less repaid and income tax. If it's not cheaper to shop online, I would probably be more likely to go into the store, yes. Shop online to avoid sales tax, more just to like avoid lines and like to get my things as soon as possible. I feel bad about the brick and mortar because I think it's such a, I mean, you know, it's jobs with the online jobs, great jobs too. It's really going to hurt us, especially the small businesses. Yeah. You know, they're already getting us. The big guys are getting us in the grocery store and now online, come on. So Neil, you heard a mixture there and here's the interesting thing. I think some of the winners today are brick and mortar names, the big ones. And now the ones who have perfected what they call Omni Channel using the internet, using their physical presence. Obviously, to your point, states are big winners with up to 14 billion in taxes they did not collect last year. And then of course, there are these big names like the Amazons of the world. That's a winner because now, effectively, what we have is a moat around these big established names that will hurt future competition. All right, buddy, if you can stay right there, because I want to bring up this on some keen guests in the mix here and I have a different view on this, a lot of people, I want to focus on the fact that this, forget about the review raise, we'll make it too easy for states and municipalities to forget about trying to rein in spending. This is all about getting more money so they can have more spending. So let's get our market watchers, Heath, Herzog and Melissa Armel. What do you make listening with you that what this is is a green light for just getting more money, whatever the means, and not doing anything to look at your spending? Yeah, that's the problem. I really, listen, we spend a lot in taxes. If you live in New York, you're taxed in the city. There's a New York City tax. I don't mind paying my fair share. What I have a problem with is the way that they spend it, they're not thoughtful about how they spend money. Look at California. I mean, the state's almost going bankrupt, so now they're going to have all this money coming in. And guess what? They're not going to care then as much as how they're spending it. You know, if I'm looking at this, I'm thinking, all right, it wasn't too long ago. We got the, you know, online gambling tax that's been approved and all of a sudden that's going to mean a lot of money in New Jersey, they're already spending that money. It's not even in yet. On now this, I'm just wondering how far this goes because if anything, forget about whether it's justified or not, it's another excuse not to reign in spending. Right. Well, we've always seen this swampy activity happen across states, but a lot of these states don't have income tax imposed. Right. So what they're doing is increasing the sales tax in order to compensate for that loss in income tax. So I think in the dissensus... In all states, that's some sort of an impact. Right, right. This is on top of that. Well, so in Kennedy's, in his opinion, he was saying it was somewhere between... Justice Kennedy. Justice Kennedy, yes. Between 8 and 33 billion dollars that these states are going to be bringing in in terms of revenue with these sales taxes. I don't think consumers are really going to change their behavior. I've been covering this for 10 years. Yeah. Now that people can sit on their sofas and surf the web, purchase, a little bit of sales tax on their favorite items isn't going to deter them from shopping. No, I fully agree with that. And you know, Charles, I mean, you and I were talking about this. The convenience of online shopping is such that people, especially in the early days when Amazon was prohibitively more expensive than traditional retailers, but it was so darn easy to use, people really didn't care. So I'm wondering whether it will make a difference for some of these online guys, Amazon chief among them. How do you break apart the players who get hurt versus those? Yeah, not so much. Amazon doesn't get hurt. Pretty soon they'll have drones delivering stuff to our house. We didn't even order, but once we get it, we'll be so happy. Like, how the heck did they know that? I do worry about the entrepreneurs or what I call the side hustle folks, right? People selling on Etsy, people selling on eBay, look at those stocks today. They took the biggest hits and you're responsible for that. If you have an item you put up on eBay and you sell it and you have to pay attention, wait a minute, I don't have operations in that state, but I got to pay the sales tax or deal with that for that state. Well, that's why overstock and a couple others are saying the Congress needs to make a define this. Now, South Dakota, which brought this case already had set their limits at 100,000 revenue and sales or 200 transactions. So that's their bar. I think that bar is relatively low. We need a universal bar perhaps, but it's going to hurt just regular folks out there. Someone who's been making ends meet by selling things on eBay, this is a serious blow to them, I think. What about for retail spending in general? You've been impressed with this recovery and everything else that's going on. Does this dampen it or the prospect of taxes dampen it? Well, I have to be honest with you. Usually in the year, but some of these retail companies have had a great start to the year considering the way the market's traded out this year. Target looks great. It's near the highs. Coles looks great. They've both got a lift today. Walmart doesn't look so great, but they really look great considering usually Black Friday. Usually retailers are, that's where Black Friday came from, they're in the red until Black Friday. Right now these stocks are green. Monthly retail sales have been on the up for the last couple months. So nothing here that focuses on some state taxes is going to change it. To Charles's point, it is going to be a little complicated from state to state because each state is going to have their own set of taxes. So if you are a smaller retailer, you're going to have to deal with all of those different tax rolls. What do you think of Amazon, I think, was preparing to Charles's point for this day because it's now in 45 states where it used to sort of, the criticism was that it was a behemoth that ran away from this responsibility. Now it's everywhere. That is the genius and also the bane of existence for these smaller retailers that Amazon is able to see around corners that way. All right, guys, thank you all very, very much. Charles Payne, of course, gets all his suits online. They're beautiful. They're just impeccable. I defy you to watch. He never repeats one. They're so beautiful. All right. In the meantime, the president now telling Democrats, come on down. Stop by. Visit. Maybe we can get something done. I haven't heard a reaction after this. This is a story about mail and packages, and it's also a story about people, people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams. They're handing us more than mail.