SEATTLE -- A huge tax dodge is costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars each year -- all made possible by the Internet.

Senior Political Reporter Essex Porter digs into the new effort to stop it, and how it's going to affect you.

One of the pleasures of shopping online can be ducking Washington state's sales tax, but for the state, it's costly.

As we confirmed at Seattle's online coffee company, there's isn't much you can't buy on the Internet these days.

"It's easy to navigate; it's easy to find something and see kind of how it looks," said Juya Ghanaie, an online shopper.

"It's just convenient. It comes to your address," said Anthony Martinez, another Internet shopper.

And when you buy from out of state, chances are you will not have to pay the Washington state sales tax.

SALES TAX FACTS Get information about your obligation to pay Washington state's sales tax even when you buy things out of state at dor.wa.gov

"I bought a digital camera online, and it was maybe a thousand bucks and I didn't pay sales tax for that," said shopper Jite Agbro.

But traditional stores, like Ben Bridge in Olympia have to charge every penny of the sales tax and risk losing customers.

"That is frustrating for us, because we're in the state, we're supporting the rent, we have employees, we're doing the work we want to service the customer and then it's gone," said Perry Saueressig of Ben Bridge Jewelers.

The sales tax makes up 51 percent of state revenue.

But so far, the state has no way of collecting the tax from out of state companies selling online. The losses are huge and growing.

"(It's) about 635 million total, state and local, and that's 6.8 nearly 7 percent of collections," said Mike Gowrylow of the state Department of Revenue.

With an additional $600 million, the state could hire more than 13,000 teachers at the state's average salary or put 8,000 more experienced state troopers on the beat or build a new four-lane highway 150 miles long in Eastern Washington or just give a $100 tax rebate to every man, woman and child in the state.

"Let's make it equal, let the retailers online submit to the state and charge the same sales tax as we do in the store that way we are competitive basically dollar for dollar," Saueressig said.

And now there's a plan to clear the legal and technical barriers to collecting online sales taxes nationwide, perhaps as early as next year.

The U.S. Supreme Court had held up online tax collections, ruling it was too much to expect businesses to track each of the 8000 separate tax jurisdictions in the country.

That's where a young Bainbridge Island company called Avalara comes in, with the nation's leading service that making it easy for online businesses to collect the proper sales tax from consumers everywhere.

"What it can do is very quickly identify in a real time transaction what tax rates apply when you sell a specific product into a specific jurisdiction," said Marshal Kushniruk of Avalara.

Companies like Kyocera and USA Today already use Avalara for their Web sales tax collections.

"I think it's just an inevitable move in order to help the coffers of the states and operate in a more efficient manner," said Scott McFarlane, Avalara's CEO.

Some online consumers are a little uneasy about the coming taxes.

"For some of the bigger items yeah, it would be very disappointing, the smaller ones, things like books and stuff, I don't think it matters too much," said Internet shopper Jite Agbro.

Seattle-based Amazon.com does collect sales tax from purchasers here in Washington state and tells us it has no objection to doing so nationwide as along as Internet sellers large and small face the same obligation.

Eighteen states already passed laws putting them on track to collect internet sales taxes from hundreds of online sellers that volunteered to pay them.

Washington state lawmakers are expected to pass similar new laws when they convene in January.