With Total Disregard For Small Businesses

One of the lead articles in today’s New Bern Sun Journal was entitled, “Online marketers called on to collect sales taxes.”

The article states:

The National Association of Counties joined collective groups of cities, mayors, and state governments last week in a Capitol Hill briefing that called on Congress to pass legislation forcing online marketers to collect sales tax.

Craven County Commissioner Scott Dacey, vice chairman of the Craven board and its delegate to NACo, spoke for counties and was one of these speaking for NACo on the importance of this issue and its impact on counties.

What about the impact of the businesses involved? An internet business usually does business in many areas of the country. Different areas of the country have different tax laws–different tax rates, different items taxable, different tax rates on different items. Has Commissioner Dacey or any of the other county executives considered the burden they would be placing on small business owners with this tax? How many clerical workers will the average internet business have to hire to track taxes and input information into the computer? How many programmers will have to rewrite the computer codes of these businesses to comply with the law? What will be the administrative cost to the average internet business? Very large internet businesses like EBay and Amazon may be able to cope with the additional expense, but the impact of this law will be to drive the small businessman off the internet. Commissioner Dacey and other country executives, is your intention to take away small businessmen from the internet? If you are not intent of driving small companies off of the internet, you need to rethink your proposal.