Salter – Net sales tax hurts local retailers
While I see the reader’s premise as somewhat incongruent, I’m no more or less concerned about the competitive disadvantage of the Chinese than I am Amazon.com and Reed’s Gum Tree Books in Tupelo.
Reed’s, a venerable Mississippi business over a century old, has bricks and mortar businesses in Mississippi and is also an online retailer. Like other Mississippi businesses, Reed’s is required to collect sales taxes at the point of sale in their stores and online. Again, the tax is owed by the purchaser. The notion that such taxes should not be collected from online purchasers for any reason other than the technical inability to do so is one that confounds me.
Gov. Haley Barbour should be praised for seeing the light on Internet sales taxes in the 11th hour and 59th minute of his two terms as Mississippi’s governor. But when he was seeking office in 2003 and for the majority of his two terms, he was “against raising anybody’s taxes.”
Hattiesburg American
12/16/11
