After about a decade of wriggling and whining, with copious amounts of pretense sprinkled liberally upon nonsense, the Republican-dominated General Assembly – kicking and screaming to the last – finally agreed that online businesses should pay the same sales tax that mom-and-pop businesses have paid all along. There never existed a legitimate reason that online sellers got a tax break. Missouri, like other states, long ago enacted laws to tax regular business sales. So, if a big box store sells a pair of shoes, that store pays sales tax, just like a little mom-and-pop store pays to sell shoes, with size making no difference. But the way state lawmakers perverted the law, if an online business sells a pair of shoes, then that business should not have to pay sales tax. Why not? Hmmm. Lawmakers opposed to collecting online sales tax turned themselves into pretzles when trying to explain why they gave a tax break to online, out-of-state sellers, but not to mom-and-pop businesses that…