Internet Tax "Fairness"

A bipartisan group wants to tax the Internet.  Thomas Paine said in Rights of Man (1791) that, “Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation.  It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.”  Now, after bankrupting just about every public institution in this Country the politicians want to tax every Internet transaction regardless of whether or not you live in a state without sales taxes.  Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) have teamed up to promote a serious levy on all Internet sales.  The “Marketplace Fairness Act” S. 1832 was originally proposed last November by Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY), and is now in the Committee on Finance.  The Popvox vote is 22% for, 78% against.  We’re particularly tired of calls for theft dressed up as “fairness.”  What is fair is for you to decide what to do with the fruit of your labor.  Anything else is evil, either as theft, or as tribute, or as greed, or as envy.  This 1984 new-speak of calling public sector greed, “fairness,” now brings us to an attempt to destroy the last vestige of state competition; sales taxes and the Internet.  The several states were supposed to be experiments in democracy, where drug users could legalize in one state and tax protestors could congregate in another foregoing collective services.  Instead, when one state says “no sales tax” in an effort to interest business and growth, another now wants to impose their sales tax on the residents of the untaxed state.  Soon there will be no quarter for tax weary citizens.  It isn’t fairness; it’s coercion, pure and simple.  We say, “Hands off.”

-- Paul Marotta