Jay Rockefeller: “we have an important opportunity this week, or before, to help small and local businesses all across our country. We…”

“we have an important opportunity this week, or before, to help small and local businesses all across our country. We have an opportunity to help the kinds of local businesses that make our small towns and rural States so warm and inviting. These businesses attract tourists because of the nature of their smallness. Everything is not big. Everything that is big is not necessarily friendly. Small businesses are almost always friendly. Today these same small and local businesses are competing on a very unfair playing field. This is an issue I have cared about ever since the Internet was created. I felt strongly about it then and I feel strongly about it now--except even more so. For over 20 years States have been unable to enforce their own sales tax laws on sales by out-of-State catalog and online sellers due to something I am familiar with only because of the specificity of the issue to the 1992 Supreme Court decision Quill Corp. v. North Dakota. Sales tax is not collected for most Internet transactions, so consumers know they can benefit from a 5- to 10-percent discount online, and they know that before they go into a store. In fact, something that is even more discouraging--because I have made a point of watching it--also takes place, and that is what cell phones can do for shoppers. I have seen shoppers in various small shops, such as craft shops, tool shops, and other various kinds of Main Street shops, come in and look at the merchandise.…”