Abstract: A system and method for collection of tax in real time from customers conducting a remote, non-in-store purchase. The system comprises a merchant shopping cart subsystem, tax calculation service, and a charging, archival, and reporting system (CARS) subsystem. Participating merchants in the system do not conduct tax calculations and will not receive tax revenue payments, and thus will not be required to maintain and provide reports to tax authorities. Tax revenue on customer purchases from merchants participating in the system will be collected by a third party authorized by the respective participating tax authority. The collected tax revenue will be held by the third party in a trust account until such time as the tax authority request the revenue.