Sherrod Brown replies to Internet tax bill

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The following was a reply to a protest on the internet tax bill. In bold: [b]Under current law, internet purchases made across state lines are exempt from taxation at the time of sale. While taxpayers are supposed to report these online purchases on their tax returns, very few actually do so. This puts community businesses at a significant disadvantage relative to large national and international corporations that operate in stores and online. And, as more people make purchases online, state and local governments lose billions of dollars of revenue that could be used to hire local law enforcement, provide emergency services, and maintain common spaces. The Marketplace Fairness Act would allow the state in which a purchaser resides to automatically collect sales tax on remote purchases. To keep this requirement from overburdening individual internet sellers and small internet businesses, small online vendors (under $1 million in annual sales) will not have to collect tax on any goods sold across state lines.[/b] To understand this, what this means is, local companies who have to collect the tax, are at a disadvantage to out of state companies, who don't collect the tax. I knew that when companies started advertising the fact they didn't have to collect tax, that this would usher in a push to tax internet purchases. These dumb companies ruined it for everyone. The moment you openly advertise you are not paying tax, you are asking to get taxed. Further, Mr Brown claims that governments are losing tons of potential tons revenue. Problem is Ohio is having a record year tax revenue wise, at $17.6 Billion dollars. As a reference, in 2008 Ohio collected $8 Billion. Tax revenue despite the economic down turn, is more than double, yet all Brown can think of is how we need to tax more. Worse yet, Brown is only looking at a limited selection of businesses. I've worked for several companies that sell online, and have made huge increases in growth over the past 5 years. Those businesses will be hurt by an a tax, and subsequent loss of out of state sales, more than any business will be helped. Of course the universal losers will be the customers, who are also the tax payers of this massive $17.6 Billion in Ohio State taxes. The same is true of all states. All states will be harmed by this, not helped. This is nothing more than government screwing over the public again.