For those of you who have followed the ongoing saga of Internet taxation, you’re familiar with a hideous little creation known as the Streamlined Sales Tax Project or “SSTP.” As I detailed in this briefing paper last year, the SSTP is basically a giant sales tax cartel scheme. In the name of “tax fairness” and a supposed “level playing field,” some state and local officials would allow the extraterritorial taxation of interstate commerce via this Frankenstein monster of a tax collection scheme. Tax competition among the states would suffer as a result and consumers would be burdened with billions in new tax obligations. All this to get at the tiny amount of e-commerce out there, which still isn’t more than 2 percent of all retail sales in America!
The folks over at Progress & Freedom Foundation have just released a new report documenting just how costly this SSTP scheme would be. Take a look at their findings here.
Let’s hope Congress doesn’t give in to state and local pressures to erase the protections our Constitution provides for interstate commerce and vendors.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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