Jon Tester: “I wish to speak on this bill. It is called the Marketplace Fairness Act. It will not do anything but damage to the…”

“I wish to speak on this bill. It is called the Marketplace Fairness Act. It will not do anything but damage to the marketplace, in my opinion. This bill will impose new burdens on our small businesses. Let me repeat that. It will place new burdens on our small businesses. I have heard folks come to the floor and talk about how great this is going to be for small businesses. This is going to be terrible for small businesses. Small businesses are going to have to bring on more people. This is going to be more bureaucracy, with more accountants, more lawyers. This should be called the bill to employ more attorneys and more CPAs. The fact is, I do not think the attorneys want this kind of work, nor do the CPAs want this kind of work, because what it will do is fundamentally alter the rights of States by allowing them to tax entities outside their borders. Who is put at risk by this? Small businesses. If the small business screws up, by the way, they are the ones who are held accountable. We talk about this big old database out there that these folks are going to be able to dub into to determine what the sales tax is for a single entity of the 9,600 cities and States and municipalities that collect sales tax. If the business gets it wrong, they are the ones that have the penalty. I am going to tell you that small businesses are not that profitable to be able to go through this kind of an exercise. In Montana we are in a little different situation.…”