Heidi Alexander: “the Senator alluded to this in his remarks, and we both heard Senator Heitkamp from North Dakota. It is pretty…”

“the Senator alluded to this in his remarks, and we both heard Senator Heitkamp from North Dakota. It is pretty remarkable that a Senator, in her first 3 months, would find herself in the middle of a debate about a problem she created 20 years ago in North Dakota. She brought this case that created this situation. But let me ask the Senator from Illinois what he envisions will happen if we do not act. If I am not mistaken, under the arrangements we now have today, if a big Internet seller in Illinois--someone who sells more than $1 million a year--and as I understand it, 99 percent of Internet sellers are exempt from this, but let's say you are in that 1 percent and you want to sell in Tennessee--your responsibility is to file one return in Tennessee, and you are subject to one audit, period. And if you sell in another State, the same thing. So you might be subject to filing one report and one audit in all the States, and many of the States are part of what is called a streamline structure where they work together, so they audit together. And audits don't occur every year. But there are 9,600 taxing jurisdictions in the United States. So what we have done or propose to do is simplify this greatly so that if you are an Internet seller, if you sell online or by catalog from Illinois to Tennessee, you have a very small number of reports you need to fill out, a very small number of audits to which you might be subjected.…”