> it's a wonder common sense has held out as long as it has.

> I don't want a level playing field.

If you explicitly advocate that some businesses should be treated more favorably than others with respect to taxation, even if they are selling the same goods to the same customers, fine.

But the opposite point of view is surely not "bullshit".

The bullshit part is trying to apply a geographic model of governance and taxation onto a technology that is location-independent. It has nothing to do with treating businesses one way or the other.

Politicians want to view economic data as somehow being "owned" by a county, state, or country. So they make policies that are supposed to manage (for lack of a better word) commerce inside those boundaries.

But we don't live in that world any more. The problem here isn't a lack of taxes for some businesses. The problem is an attitude that somehow you can sit above it all and pick and chose who to favor and who not to. It's 20th-century thinking applied to a 21st-century world. The only thing this will accomplish is 1) hurting the poor, and 2) creating a bunch of nonsense paperwork. Commerce will still happen without taxes; it's just the disadvantaged and new businesses that will have extra inertia to deal with.

Yes, if you frame it in terms of "what's fair to business" then sure, the argument works in favor of taxation. My problem is that the argument itself is stated in outdated terms.

The beauty of Congress leaving the net alone wasn't that it was laissez faire. It was that nobody understood exactly what the net meant to the future. Seems like this is still the case, but politicians have decided they've waited around long enough. It's time for their piece of the action.

"The bullshit part is trying to apply a geographic model of governance and taxation onto a technology that is location-independent."

What kind of government is not "location based"? People who live in a place are bound by the laws of that place. That hasn't somehow changed in the 21st century.

You argue that Internet sales tax hurts the poor. That's true because it's a sales tax (a consumption tax), but it has nothing to do with the Internet part. If you think that sales tax is a bad idea that's one thing, but it looks here like you're arguing that taxing face-to-face transactions is fine but taxing transactions over the Internet is unfair. I don't get how the technology justifies the tax exemption.

Many of the customers stubbornly remain location-based.

And over half of the US states have Use Taxes as part of their body of law, where if you make a purchase from another state, you're required to pay the sales tax yourself.

Where this gets interesting is the impact on/by the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution, which gets to the heart of federalism by reserving non-delegated powers to the states and to the people, and how that intersects with the Commerce Clause, which says Congress has the ability to regulate commerce between the states, foreign nations, and Indian tribes.

Which brings up an interesting point - will there be an exemption for foreign sales?

I strongly disagree with your argument that internet sales taxes fall disproportionately on the poor. I suspect that it's inaccurate, and even if it is accurate, it seems fair to impose the same sales taxes on the same goods, without regard to how they are sold.

However, you do make several valid and important points here, which you neglected to make in your original post.

HN is a well-trafficked website. It is not out of the question that legislators, or at least business owners in their district, read the commentary here. Imagine that a legislator read your top comment that "I don't care about a level playing field", dismissing the idea as if it were obviously stupid. Would this legislator conclude that we are rational and sensible people, who understand the issues involved and are proposing something reasonable and fair for all parties?

He or she would probably conclude that we are just another selfish special interest group, defending our unfair special treatment because... because... um, I guess, because taking it away is "bullshit"?

...The bullshit part is trying to apply a geographic model of governance...

You could use a VAT, but that won't appease the state constituencies looking for more revenues. Taxes are hard, full of unintended consequences and conflicting stakeholders.

I don't understand this line of thinking. People already pay sales taxes in big box stores, so in this case, it's more like the Government is artificially encouraging online businesses and penalizing physical stores. Both kinds of businesses being subject to the same rules is a good thing surely?

Problem is that my business is in VA, and I'm now subject to complying with taxing authorities in, say, California, where I don't have representation or a physical presence. It is unconstitutional in principle.

You need to brush up on your understanding of constitutionality.

That you pay taxes for engaging in interstate commerce is in no way, in practice or principle, unconstitutional. Please, rid yourself of the notion that taxation without representation applies to interstate commerce. It does not.

The founders worked the commerce issue(s) out after learning the Articles of Confederation's approach was woefully inadequate for the establishment and governance of a nation. There is a very long legislative and juridical history you can dive into to fully understand exactly how the commerce powers have been worked out over the last couple hundred years.

In what way? The constitution gives the Federal government the right to regulate inter-state commerce. If Congress passes a law says that states can tax inter-state purchases, isn't that simply exercising Congress's authority?

> Problem is that my business is in VA, and I'm now subject to complying with taxing authorities in, say, California, where I don't have representation or a physical presence. It is unconstitutional in principle.

It is not "unconstitutional in principle" for Congress to regulate interstate commerce in general, nor is it "unconstitutional in principle" for it to do so in a way which permits States to tax foreign businesses selling into the State the same way as local businesses selling in the State in particular.

Unless "unconstitutional in principle" is just a fancy way of saying "something newbie12 doesn't like".

> I want goods and services delivered to me as efficiently as possible.

You know what makes deliveries more efficient? State funded infrastructure.

now, how could we finance such a thing...

No national sales tax currently exists, to my knowledge. So this is a new precedent. And to answer your question, we could finance such things by avoiding wars, shutting down needless agencies, and so on.

People are already struggling, burdening them with a tax that will generate revenue that is peanuts compared to what we're spending on our wars. Doesn't make sense to me.

> No national sales tax currently exists, to my knowledge. So this is a new precedent.

No, because, despite the media calling the Marketplace Fairness Act an "Internet Sales Tax", the bill is not a national (or any other) tax. It is a bill which conditionally lifts existing barriers to states extending their sales taxes to cover online retailers selling goods to people in the state.

If the bill passes, then states with sales taxes would have to choose whether or not to meet the conditions set in order to extend those taxes to internet retailers selling into the state. No tax is created directly by the bill, and any tax enabled by the bill would be a state tax, not a national tax.

> People are already struggling, burdening them with a tax that will generate revenue that is peanuts compared to what we're spending on our wars.

Most states aren't using any of the taxes they collect to fund wars, and the central purpose of this isn't so much to raise new revenues (though it will enable states to do some of that) as to eliminate the tax incentives that currently exist which favor out-of-state internet-based retailers over in-state retailers (internet-based or brick-and-mortar) due to the inability of states to levy the same taxes on the former as the latter.

This is not a national sales tax. This is existing state sales tax being applied to an additional category of sales.

In the US much of the infrastructure -like roads and bridges- is ostensibly state funded so decreasing the federal deficit wouldn't necessarily have any effect.

State funded infrastructure? If only they'd actually spend tax dollars on that instead of lying to get the taxes and then spending the money elsewhere.

They're collecting record taxes at the state level, and our infrastructure is in the worst shape it has been in since pre-interstate highway system days, so now what?

Raise taxes some more, so they can make more empty promises and redirect funds to pet projects instead of infrastructure? How in the world does this band of criminals deserve any trust such that they should get more money to spend, before they prove they can actually work with the $6.x trillion they already get to spend (nearly the size of China's entire economy, and we can't even fix bridges or upgrade our electrical grid).

Actually, it's infrastructure that makes deliveries efficient. State funding is only one avenue for creating it. Many would argue state funding is inefficient.

> Congress had a hands-off approach to the internet for some time, and it took off like wildfire because of it. All that's changing now, it seems.

The internet would've taken off regardless of Congress's level of involvement with it.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

Even if they wanted to regulate it at the time, they would have no idea where to start. The legislative body is, even to this day, not exactly comprised of technologically savvy individuals. Rather, these are people who are very good at acquiring and wielding power, crushing any opposition, and pandering to their core demographics.

So if you told them that, oh, a 'series of electronic tubes' sprang into existence, they would just look at you, scratch their heads, and ask 'but can we tax it?' Oh wait...

In all seriousness, though, the Internet would not be the same if there were meddlesome regulations imposed on it from the very beginning. Openness, freedom and sharing of information, innovation, and experimentation are intricately woven into the DNA of the web; this would simply not be the case with any sort of stifling draconian policies. Entrepreneurs would have little incentive to take the leaps of faith that have since turned the Internet into, at least in Congress' eyes, the economic powerhouse that it is today.

It truly is a wonder that, just now, they are coming around to restricting its freedom (CISPA) and taxing it (the perhaps unintentionally Randian-sounding 'Marketplace Fairness Act'). Not to get all Negative Nancy, but I predict that we are nearing the end of 'The Golden Age of Internet Openness.' Never again will we have this much unfettered and almost-free-as-in-beer access to content and information. Of course I hope this is not the case, but whenever governments get involved and try to 'fix' an industry, it does not bode well for its future.

> Openness, freedom and sharing of information, innovation, and experimentation are intricately woven into the DNA of the web; this would simply not be the case with any sort of stifling draconian policies.

How does taxing meat-space purchases that happen to be done over the internet affect any of these things?

> Entrepreneurs would have little incentive to take the leaps of faith that have since turned the Internet into, at least in Congress' eyes, the economic powerhouse that it is today.

Yes, regulation has eviscerated America's drug industry, its financial industry, its content industry, its defense industry, its rail freight industry, its agricultural industry, etc. Oh wait, no, all of those are preeminent in the world. But it does kill innovation, right? Well no, one of the most innovative companies in the history of the world, that built the world's preeminent telecommunications network of the time, was a de-facto government-sanctioned monopoly (AT&T).