Heidi Alexander: “Thank you, Mr. President. We talked about how difficult this is. This is a good example of why we need to get this out…”

“Thank you, Mr. President. We talked about how difficult this is. This is a good example of why we need to get this out of Washington and back in the States. For the last 15 years the States have been figuring out how to do this. They have it pretty well worked out, and in just a 20-minute debate we make it sound complicated. Here is how hard it is. If I buy some ice cream ingredients from Williams Sonoma, and they are in another State, I use my credit card, I put in my ZIP Code, and the software automatically tells Williams Sonoma what the sales tax is that is owed. They collect it and they wire it to the State government. That is all that happens. This debate sounds like it happened in 1890 before the horse and buggy, before the Internet. I mean, we live in a different world. Here is what is fair. What is fair is allowing a State--not Washington--listen to the chairman of the American Conservative Union Al Cardenas. He says: When it comes to state sales taxes, it is time to address the area where federally mandated prejudice is most egregious--the policy towards Internet sales, the decades-old inequity between online sales and in-person sales as outdated and unfair. If I am trying to run the International Boot Company, I have to pay a 10-percent penalty to somebody who is out of State. If somebody is out of State and by catalog or by Internet they want to sell to the 6 million people in Tennessee, they don't have to do that.…”