For Immediate Release:
(Washington, DC) – New legislationfrom U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) calling on Congressto avoid heaping new Internet tax collection burdens on small businesses is amajor boost for homegrown entrepreneurs and taxpayers alike. That’s the view ofthe 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU), which today endorsed theSense of the Senate resolution stating that Congress should not give states“the authority to impose any new burdensome or unfair tax collectingrequirements on small Internet businesses.” Earlier this year NTU backed asimilar House bill (H. Res. 95) introduced by Representatives Dan Lungren(R-CA) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). NTU Executive Vice President Pete Sepp offeredthe following statement in strong support of the Wyden-Ayotte proposal:
Alltoo many elected officials and tax administrators regard the Internet as somevast unconquered territory that is denying them access to supposedly massiveresources for filling their coffers. In fact the opposite is true. The onlineworld has given millions of Americans the opportunity to start new businessesof their own, while allowing millions more existing businesses to expand theirmarkets and improve their efficiency. As a result, governments are alreadyreaping huge rewards – and revenues – from the Internet.
SenatorsWyden and Ayotte deserve a round of applause for recognizing these prosperousdevelopments and seeking Congress’s commitment to protect, rather than preyupon, what remains the key element in a jobs-based economic recovery: smallbusiness activity.
Theirlegislation could not have been introduced at a more important time. Ratherthan confront their irresponsible and unsustainable spending, some states hopeto plug their budget holes by coaxing Congress’s blessing for a ‘streamlinedsales tax’ revenue-collection cartel. Such schemes – despite supporters’ assurancesof ‘small seller exemptions’ and promises of ‘simplification’ – would saddlesmall businesses with significant compliance costs and hamper the healthytax-policy competition among states that has benefitted Americans’ pocketbooks.
Incontrast to those misguided efforts, Senators Wyden and Ayotte are admirablyproving Washington can craft bipartisan, forward-thinking proposals to helpreassure our nation’s innovators that they have the freedom to succeed. Everyone of their colleagues who believes in the positive contributions of America’ssmall businesses – along with the well-being of America’s taxpayers – shouldactively work to pass this legislation immediately and oppose bills to givestates additional destructive tax powers. NTU’s members will be doing the same.
NTU is anonpartisan, nonprofit citizen organization founded in 1969 to work for lowertaxes, smaller government, and economic freedom at all levels. The group wasamong the first to support the federal Internet Access Tax Moratorium andoppose the states’ Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement. Note: Formore on NTU’s work in this and other public policy areas, visit www.ntu.org.