Alabama’s system for taxing online sales is headed to a courtroom clash as more than one hundred smaller cities and all 67 counties move to defend a 9-year-old flat tax they say guaranteed millions of dollars in revenues.

The pushback comes as a coalition of larger cities and school districts argue that the state’s Simplified Sellers Use Tax (SSUT) is unfair and threatens to devastate their budgets.

The conflict intensified this week with a flurry of legal filings known as interventions in a lawsuit filed in August in Montgomery County Circuit Court. The case was brought by the City of Tuscaloosa, the Tuscaloosa City School System, and the City of Mountain Brook against the Alabama Department of Revenue.

The financial stakes continue to be high as online shopping grows. According to t

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