On the recordApril 25, 2013
The Senator just said the magic word. The Senator is talking about States where there is nexus. I ask for the proposition where there is no nexus. That is the whole point of a lot of this discussion here. The point in Quill is that in a State where there is no nexus, a sales tax cannot be enforced. Where there is nexus, it can be enforced. I will bet those cases the Senator cited have to do with whether a State is doing business in another State, and that is nexus. We are not talking about that here. We are talking about remote sellers where there is not nexus and not doing business in the State. Let's say there is a remote seller in China selling merchandise in North Dakota. I will bet dollars to doughnuts those cases have nothing to do with remote sellers generally. I will make a second point, that I think North Dakota will have a hard time enforcing the provisions of this bill in some province in China. Is North Dakota going to go to Hunan Province and have the Premier of Hunan Province enforce this? I doubt it. It is not just China, it is any other country. The Senator is confusing nexus from remote sellers, and that is not the point here. The point is remote sellers. That is just one of the problems of this bill when we start looking at it and start thinking about it and what is in it. That is why this bill should have gone to committee in the first place so we could correct it. One other point, and I don't think this is understood by very many Senators.…
