On the recordApril 24, 2013
As my good friend from Arkansas said and for the benefit of the Senator from Oregon, we haven't made a request yet for this amendment to be moved to the front of the line to be debated, but we are here to say that we would like to have this amendment on this bill. We are both supporters of the Marketplace Fairness Act for reasons that I hope we have well established, and I think people, including Members of the Senate, are beginning to understand that it is a fairness principle. But what this amendment does, recognizing the importance of online commerce, that it has grown dramatically since 1998 when this amendment first became part of the law, the Internet Tax Freedom Act--and in 1988, it said that you wouldn't tax the Internet itself for use of the Internet. Unless we act, this law will expire in 2014. This would be a 10-year extension that would simply say that we would continue to ensure that people's access to Internet services is tax free. To be clear, the underlying bill we are considering, the Marketplace Fairness Act, doesn't create a new tax. It doesn't tax consumers' use of the Internet, and Senator Pryor and I both would oppose taxing use of the Internet at this point. But this simply adds to the fair tax collection processes that will be available to States under the Marketplace Fairness Act by extending current law to ensure without any question that this is not about taxing the Internet.…
