State Sen. Chris Holbert says Coloradans are about to feel some pain, and potentially some shame, when a 2010 law takes effect in July allowing the state to collect personal data about online purchases.

His Senate Bill 238 would waive a Colorado requirement that online retailers who don’t collect sales taxes to send the name, shipping address and amount paid for purchases to the state Department of Revenue.

The bill passed the Senate Finance Committee on a 3-2 party-line vote. If it makes out of the Senate, the Republican bill is a longshot in the Democratic-controlled House.

Without the change, however, the Colorado Department of Revenue will know how much a customer spent online in order to make sure customers pay up on purchases over $500 from retailers who do more than $100,000 in business in the state.

“If you or I spend $500 with Betty’s cakes. I don’t think anyone is going to think or wonder,” said Amy Stephens, a former House majority leader who is lobbying in support of Holbert’s bill.

“But it really does become different when it’s www.gunsamerica.com, or www.transgenderzone.com or www.crossdresser.com.”

But without verification paying the taxes would be on an honor system, which Holbert characterized as an “ancient standard of trust.”

Internet retailers also would be allowed to send e-mails instead of first-class letters to customers when sales tax isn’t charged for online sales, so customers know how much they have to pay the state on their tax returns.

Holbert said allowing the law to take effect without the change invites a bureaucratic nightmare rife with mistakes and hassles for taxpayers that lawmakers will be hearing about.

He cited the U.S. Constitution.

“The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution is thrown right out the window, because … the state of Colorado is going to subject people to what I believe is an unreasonable search of their person, their papers, their effects,” he said.

“Is that freedom? Is that liberty? You would be free to shop online, but you would no longer in Colorado be able to do it with liberty with the exemption of the heavy boot of government stepping into your life.”

The issue is a spinoff of Colorado’s battle to collect the so-called “Amazon tax” from the online giant.

After a five-year court battle with the state of Colorado, Amazon began collecting the tax last year.

In December the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to hear the online industry’s appeal of a lower court ruling that said allowing the retailers have to abide by the law passed by the Colorado legislature in 2010.

Judge Neil Gorsuch wrote in the lower court decision, “If anything, by asking us to strike down Colorado’s law, out-of-state mail order and Internet retailers don’t seek comparable treatment to their in-state, brick-and-mortar rivals, they seek more favorable treatment, a competitive advantage, a sort of judicially sponsored arbitrage opportunity or ‘tax shelter.'”

Amazon announced last week it would start collecting taxes in the last four states that has a statewide levy, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine and New Mexico. Five states have no state sales tax.

Samantha Curran of the Colorado Fiscal Institute said the bill would reverse progress the state has made in recouping sales taxes lost to online sales.

Curran said removing the notification retailers send to tax collectors means most people won’t bother to pay.

She noted that the legislative analysts estimated the bill could cost the state budget $4.7 million, “not a sum of money the state can afford to lose in a year when we’re pondering significant cuts to schools and other vital services.”

Holbert challenged whether the $4.7 million was real or a guess. He called the loss of tax revenue “a measure of pain, but I call it less pain.”

Cities and businesses hemorrhaging sales tax revenue to Amazon and other retailers also want tough enforcement, according to the Colorado Municipal League,

“Internet sales is actually one of my members’ most serious concerns, and it’s a concern that covers my entire membershipa, from small municipalities to large ones,” said Dianne Criswell, a lobbyist for the Municipal League.

Sen. Lois Court, D-Denver, also defended brick-and-mortar stores, saying she wouldn’t make it easier not to support them.

“Making it easier for people to circumvent the local businesses to go online is not what I want to do to our local businesses,” she said. “That’s not the way I want to make law in Colorado.”