A local Montana retail chain is worried about proposed tax changes under consideration on Capitol Hill.

The bills would force all online retailers to collect sales tax from people who live in states that collect it, but the smaller shops are worried about what it would do to their bottom line.

Rob Standley, the Chief Operating Officer of Vann?s Inc., a six-store electronics and appliance retailer based in Montana, said the red tape and overhead costs the proposed tax laws would create could be detrimental to their growing online retail business.

"For a really large business, like Amazon.com, it's a really small fraction of the amount of revenue that they do, and it doesn't show up much as an expense item,? said Standley. ?But for a small business, it could be the difference between profitability and not being profitable."

Standley recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., where he and a group of similar business owners met with legislators to pitch an exemption to the bills for businesses their size.

"Certainly the small business exemption is on our minds. If you can flag a small business, then businesses that are under a certain size like Vann?s, and others in Montana that are very active online, wouldn't have to comply with the regulations."