Since Quill in 1992, the volume of interstate sales via electronic channels, particularly purchases from Internet vendors, has grown rapidly, and the Government Accountability Office has estimated that in 2017, states had lost over US$13 billion in taxes that they could not collect.
Following a statement made in a concurrence opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 2015 related case, which suggested that it was time to review the decision of Quill in the wake of modern technology, more than 20 states passed "kill Quill" legislation intending to collect sales tax from out-of-state vendors and did so purposely to provide the necessary legal vehicle to take to the Supreme Court.
[7] A key aspect of the Supreme Court's March 2015 decision in Direct Marketing Ass'n came from the concurrence of Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Kennedy expressed concern on the "tenuous nature" of Quill and the "serious, continuing injustice faced by Colorado and many other States" of being able to collect sales taxes only from brick-and-mortar stores.
While Kennedy urged to review Quill, he wrote that Direct Marketing Ass'n "does not raise this issue in a manner appropriate for the court to address it".
[9] The proposed law established various safeguards for vendors and required only those with sales of over US$100,000 or with more than 200 different transactions shipped to addresses in the state to collect taxes.
By April 2017, at least 20 other states had pending or enacted similar legislation designed to challenge Quill, including Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
Of them, Systemax did not challenge the state and followed through with registering to collect sales tax for purchases made by South Dakota residents.
Justice Glen A. Severson wrote in its unanimous September 2017 decision: "However persuasive the State’s arguments on the merits of revisiting the issue, Quill has not been overruled.
"[12][11][13] The State of South Dakota determined that the only way it would be able to succeed in its lawsuit against the three companies was to ask the Supreme Court to abrogate the "sales-tax-only, physical-presence requirement" of Quill.
Based on Kennedy's sense of urgency to review Quill from his concurrence in Direct Marketing Ass'n, it sought to have their case heard in the 2018 term.
The three argued: There were 23 other amicus curiae briefs that were filed to support the companies' position and included a joint bi-partisan petition of six US House and Senate members led by the Chair of The House Committee on the Judiciary Robert W. Goodlatte which argued for the Supreme Court "to deny the petition and leave it to Congress to pursue its fuller and more appropriate means of arriving at a solution".
He noted that when Quill was decided, revenues for mail order products were around US$180 million and that e-commerce retail sales in 2017 were estimated at US$453.5 billion.
"[20] Kennedy commented that the Court did not rule whether states could retroactively collect sales taxes in the immediate case but anticipated that would be an issue of consideration in the future.
Thomas had similarly joined the majority supporting the Quill decision and had reconsidered his position in the intervening years as White had done with the ruling in South Dakota.
[29][needs update] A 2022 study published in the Journal of Public Economics found that the Wayfair decision "increased sales tax revenues by 7.9 percent, concentrated in states with stringent compliance standards.