It wasn’t exactly the Boston Tea Party, but apparently the outcry from retailers has penetrated the small minds of the folks who acted before they thought and foisted the ill-conceived so-called destination sourcing sales tax plan on the state’s business community.

Seldom has the disconnect between elected and appointed officials and the public they supposedly represent been so apparent. Obviously, few of those officials operate businesses that have to collect the tax; all those folks do is spend it.

The new regulations were put in place so the state could be among the first to participate in a “Streamlined Sales Tax” agreement to collect tax from Internet sellers. Under the premise of leveling the playing field for local merchants competing with multistate businesses operating through the Internet, the idea ultimately was to collect for the state an estimated $70 million in sales tax it loses annually through such sales. There we have it: It’s about the money. Surprise!

So, under the new regulations that took effect Tuesday, retailers who make deliveries of their products were supposed to use the sales tax rate of the city in which the delivery occurs, instead of the rate where the product is sold. All those who know the sales tax rate for every municipality in Kansas, let alone the United States, please stand up. State Secretary of Revenue Joan Wagnon conceded Wednesday in Lawrence that her department hoped to make available a new database that would allow businesses to search for sales tax rates by address — get this — by early this fall. “Search for” apparently means Joe Merchant can look it up on the Internet and apply it by hand to every transaction.

Wagnon also admitted that her department didn’t spend enough time thinking about how businesses would have to implement these new regulations. Software changes for cash registers and computerized billing systems in use by businesses across Kansas apparently were not on the department’s horizon.

The icing on this bitter cake is that these onerous changes in the state’s regulations still won’t allow Kansas to begin collecting sales taxes from out-of-state Internet companies because Congress has yet to act on enabling legislation, and the fate of that issue is uncertain.

As Lawrence jeweler Ernie Cummings said at the meeting, “It seems like I’m still going to be at a competitive disadvantage with the Internet, but now it is going to cost me more to comply with this law.”

Reaction such as that in Lawrence, and through calls and letters, apparently put enough pressure on officials that the governor now says there will be a six-month moratorium on the implementation of the rules.

That’s a good start. Now that a major “senior moment” by the state’s leadership is acknowledged, the folks in Topeka should go back to the drawing board, get the information they need to address the problems, and if they proceed, get it right next time, implementing any such program on a rational schedule, and not before the timing is right for Kansans to benefit from the change.