Media Advisory
IPI Ideas Author: Sonia Hoffman on 06/21/2001
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Press Release (06/20/2001)
Media Advisory (06/21/2001)
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IPI Expert Available to Discuss Congress’ Newest Action on Internet Taxes
For Immediate Release: Thursday, June 21, 2001
Contact: Sonia Hoffman at (888) 557-4474 or shoffman@ipi.org
Talk To:
- Bartlertt Cleland, Director of the IPI Center for Technology Freedom, Institute for Policy Innovation
Talk About:
- Congressional proposals to permit states to force merchants to collect sales taxes from beyond their jurisdiction
Background:
- Anyone who makes purchases using the Internet or telephone should raise a concerned brow at Congress’ newest movement to permit states to force merchants to collect sales taxes from beyond their jurisdiction. Allowing states to tax the citizens of other states is not only unconstitutional, but would never have been permissible by the Founding Fathers.
- “The problem with any proposed plan to allow states to ‘simplify’ their state and local sales and use tax systems into nationally uniform schemes through federal government encouragement is that there is nothing simple about it,” says Bartlett Cleland, Director of the IPI Center for Technology Freedom at the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI).
- Constitutional difficulties arise, for example, because current law prohibits states from taxing businesses that have no presence, or “nexus”, within the state. Otherwise, states would be able to tax citizens of other states and those citizens would have no democratic (electoral) recourse.
- Continues Cleland: “A better solution is to make permanent the Internet tax moratorium—which prohibits taxes on Internet access or discriminatory Internet taxation—and to block future efforts by state cartels to fill their coffers by taxing residents of other states.”
For further information, please contact Sonia Hoffman during the day at (972) 874-5139 or during the evening at (972) 979-4766. You may also email her at shoffman@ipi.org.
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