According to a study conducted by professors at Georgia State and Niagara Universities, in one 24-hour period, only 18% of eBay sellers of consumer electronics collected sales tax on products they sold – even in their own home states. Data such as this adds steam to Rep. Bill Delahunt’s nascent Main Street Fairness Act, a bill that, if passed, would let states simplify their sales tax collection methods (as more than 20 states have already done) to require out-of-state merchants (including online sellers) who do not have physical presence (nexus) in the state in question to collect sales taxes.

This new data, and its relationship to the Main Street Fairness Act, is highlighted in a story on Forbes.com.

The Georgia-Niagra study, originally published in the National Tax Journal, notes that compliance rises dramatically with the size of the merchant. However, one of the professors, Mikhail I. Melnik of Niagara University, said he was surprised to find that even among eBay sellers with 10,000 to 15,000 ratings – those with many unique customers who do not necessarily qualify as “occasional” sellers – only half bothered to collect sales taxes on in-state sales.

“They appear to be real businesses who have decided deliberately not to comply with state sales tax,” Melnik said. “That’s a violation of law.”

As states continue to scramble for additional revenue in the midst of all manner of fiscal crises, Melnik points to one of the study’s key findings, underscoring the big push for passage of the Main Street Fairness Act: “the real gold for revenue-hungry states is to be found by reaching across state lines.”