Legal Matters: Proposed Marketplace Fairness Act Threatens Direct Marketers

The battle lines are being tightly drawn. While national retail chains and even Amazon favor the Marketplace Fairness Act, many small online retailers believe that such legislation would cripple their businesses. They argue that the internet is an incubator for startup companies and enables small businesses access to a national market for their goods and services. Small and midsized cross-channel retailers maintain that a new federal law, effectively reversing Supreme Court precedent and expanding state taxation authority over internet transactions, will harm e-commerce, which is vital to the nation’s economic recovery.