State of Wayfair: Are Online Marketplace Laws Ready for Revamp?

Several state legislatures will likely rewrite their Wayfair-inspired marketplace facilitator laws in 2020 in response to significant challenges e-commerce businesses are facing, practitioners said.

“We would expect to see some changes in the marketplace laws in the upcoming sessions, but it will be a state by state thing,” Susan Haffield, a Minneapolis-based partner at PwC LLP, said.

Haffield said marketplace facilitators—businesses that facilitate sales by third-party retailers on electronic sales platforms—could be in for a major shock due to the wide disparity in definitions, duties, and penalties found in the patchwork of state statutes that have emerged since ...