New Use Tax Proposal Bad for Marketers, DMA Says in Protest

“The proposed amendment,” Isaacson says in his letter, “creates a distinction between the treatment of intrastate commerce and interstate commerce. This is the very evil the Constitution’s Commerce Clause was intended to prevent.”

Isaacson’s letter cites the 1994 decision in the Associated Industries of Missouri v. Lohman case in which a unanimous Supreme Court rejected Missouri’s tax law. That law allowed differential tax rates to be charged on the same item, depending on whether the item was purchased intrastate or out-of-state.