By Ray Mattes
This season, retailers have more than just stores bustling with holiday shoppers on their minds. Another concern for them – leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives who have landed on their naughty list for stymieing legislation that would hold online sellers to existing tax rules. For that, retailers in a new ad campaign are reminding the public of the real world harm to local businesses borne by this intransigence.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has vowed to quash any attempt by a lame duck Congress to act on bi-partisan Marketplace Fairness Act legislation, despite broad support for the tax parity measure and the pleas of brick-and-mortar retailers.
He may not have to exert much effort to that end as U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, has spent the 18 months since the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed that bill blocking it from getting a full and fair hearing in his House Judiciary Committee.
The end game, it seems, is to run out the clock until a new Congress takes office in January and erases the progress made on E-Fairness. That will send the issue back to square one.
In spite of such resistance, national and local retailers who sell in-store and online aren’t giving up on the fight for a level playing field on which all retailers are held to the same standards. That is, collecting at the point of purchase and remitting to the states owed sales and use tax from consumer transactions. Many retailers already fulfill this legal obligation. Those same retailers pay state and local taxes, employ Virginians and invest in our economy.
Fighting this push for tax parity are some online-only retailers that are only too happy to profit off sales to Virginians while they enjoy a tax loophole that gives them an unfair competitive advantage. Congress can close that loophole. And it should. Small business, the backbone of our economy, is being hamstrung by iniquitous tax policy that amounts to government picking winners and losers rather than letting free market conditions prevail.
Allowing that imbalance to persist dangerously erodes our entrepreneurial base. For Virginians, it also means most drivers will be punished with a higher gas tax beginning Jan. 1. Blame Congress for that – the gas tax hike is Virginia’s fallback plan to compensate it for the continued inability to access owed E-Fairness revenues.
The Alliance for Main Street Fairness this week has launched a television ad campaign explaining the stakes. It is airing in several Virginia media markets, including Washington for the Capitol Hill crowd to see, and in Congressman Goodlatte’s 6th District to remind him of his constituents’ concerns this holiday shopping season.
Ray Mattes is the President and CEO of Hampton Roads’ Retail Alliance, which invites you to download its “LoveVa” app and learn about the benefits of buying local.
