Political Quotes

“the second issue which is directly related to the first, the first being the discrimination against the local Main Street sale, is the impact on the ability of local governments and State governments to carry out their fundamental educational, health, and other responsibilities. I will be a Floridian for a moment and cite some of the statistics about the potential impact that an out-of-control moratorium leading to permanent exemption from taxation of the Internet could have on a State such as mine. In 1996, the State of Florida collected a total of $11.4 billion in general sales tax revenue. This represented 77.3 percent of Florida's tax revenue generated from sales and excise taxes, excise taxes representing $3.8 billion of that total. Florida is not unique in having a high percentage of its tax revenue generated by sales and excise taxes. For instance, Nevada gets 84.3 percent of its total revenue from these two sources; Texas, 81 percent; South Dakota, 78.4 percent; Tennessee, 76.7 percent; Washington, 74.3 percent; Mississippi, 67.3 percent; Hawaii, 61.7 percent; Arizona, 57 percent; North Dakota, 56.8 percent; and New Mexico, 56.7 percent. They are examples of States which are heavily dependent on sales and excise taxes, the kind of taxes that are generated by Main Street activity. Currently, mail order nationwide has sales of $100 billion to $120 billion a year. That is the catalog of remote selling.”