Political Quotes

“I rise to voice my continued support for the enactment of the Marketplace Fairness Act this year. There have been a number of editorials and letters and emails and other messages lately that have left out part of the story and have some of the other parts of the story wrong. I am not sure the people behind these messages have read the bill. Last year the Senate passed this bill with a strong bipartisan vote of 69 Members. I believe that now is the time to get this issue done. I have been working on this sales tax fairness issue since joining the Senate in 1997, because as a former State legislator, mayor and small business owner, I believe it is important to level the playing field for all retailers--in-store, catalog, and online--so an outdated rule for sales tax collection does not adversely impact small business and Main Street retailers. In the last century, the Supreme Court challenged us to solve this problem. We have been working on it. Thanks to a suggestion by Senator Alexander, we made this bill a States rights bill. The States passed laws a long time ago that required the collection of sales tax. And those laws say that if the tax is not collected by the retailer out of State, it has to be paid directly by the purchaser in state. Most people do not even know about that requirement, but I do understand in Wyoming we collect about $1.5 million from people voluntarily realizing the law and complying with it. But that is a minority of people.…”