The “Marketplace Fairness Act” is picking up momentum in the U.S. Senate, but the bill has some serious questions by conservative and libertarians alike.
Both the state and federal governments have spending that is way too high and includes billions in waste. Americans continue to be unemployed at a high rate and taxes are about to be increased even more on the lower and middle class Americans due to implementations in Obamacare and the threat of the Democrats infamous Taxmageddon.
It’s one thing for Democrats to push more taxation. It’s quite another when members of a party that claims to be conservative start doing it.
“If Congress fails to authorize states to collect tax on remote sales, and electronic commerce continues to grow, we are implicitly blessing a situation where states will be forced to raise other taxes– such as income or property taxes– to offset the growing loss of sales tax revenue. We do not want this to happen,” said bill sponsor Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) on the Senate floor. “The Marketplace Fairness Act empowers states to make the decision themselves. If they choose to collect already existing sales taxes on all purchases regardless of where the sale was whether it was inline (sic) or in a store, they can. If they want to keep the things the way they are, the states can do that.”
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) also claims this is about states’ rights. “The reason why this bill is inevitable and why I hope it will pass… is because it is a simple 11-page bill about a 2-word issue: States rights,” Alexander said recently. “That is why Governor Christie and Governor Daniels and Governor Bush and Congressman Pence and many Republicans and many conservatives are saying let’s pass it. Let’s get out of the way and let States make their own decisions, and then the States can decide from whom they want to collect their sales taxes.”
Who are some of the Republican governors and representatives backing increased online taxation? That list includes:
Governors Bentley (R-Ala.), Branstad (R-Iowa), Christie (R-N.J.), Daniels (R-Ind.), Haley (R- S.C.), Haslam (R-Tenn.), LePage (R-Maine), Sandoval (R-Nev.) and Snyder (R-Mich.), former Governors Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) and Jeb Bush (R-Fla.), Senators Alexander, Enzi, Blunt (R-Mo.), Boozman (R-Ark.) and Corker (R-Tenn.), and Representative Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.). Representative Mike Pence (R-Ind.)
While many of these people claim that by gaining more taxes from online sales will allow them to decrease other taxes, we all know that is not going to happen, especially in states like California.
Breitbart.com reports,
Meanwhile, in California, some business owners have already been required by state officials to report and pay sales tax on online purchases made through the likes of Amazon.
Given the Golden State’s overall approach to taxes and regulation, it seems plausible that when taxes are required to be collected and remitted by the retailer directly, other taxes will not be reduced commensurately– and so for those in very blue, very liberal states, skeptics say, an effective tax hike could apply.
Leaders like Jeb Bush, however, have argued that Marketplace Fairness should, in fact, be used as a method of providing a more stable, predictable revenue base that enables other taxes to be cut. As Bush wrote in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, “It seems to me there has to be a way to tax sales done online in the same way that sales are taxed in brick and mortar establishments. My guess is that there would be hundreds of millions of dollars that then could be used to reduce taxes to fulfill campaign promises.”
Well Governor Scott, it seems to me that you should quit looking to tax your people more and cut spending. The same goes for Jeb Bush. I agree it should be a state’s rights issue, but the problem in all of this is why are Republicans looking to tax at the state level at all? They are supposed to be the ones who are looking to decrease taxes, not switch them up and certainly not increase them. What they are contemplating will pretty much eliminate a huge business in America and that’s the online business because one of the great advantages to purchasing online, in many cases, is that those purchases are not taxed.
The mentality that government thinks they are entitled to a portion of everything everyone makes is the biggest part of the problem.
