Letters to the Editor: Reaction to Marketplace Fairness Act Editor's Note

If I loan somebody some money and they seemingly blow it on purchases that I see as superfluous, and then that same person comes and asks for more money, I'll be less inclined to loan it to them, especially not until I get a return on the original loan. That's in essence what sales tax is. It's a loan to the government in exchange for protection. I'm less inclined to give more money to any organization that wants to throw away millions (billions?) of dollars on programs that either are "bankrupt" in a year or serve no lasting purpose. Until an audit is done on governmental spending, it should get no more of our hard-earned income than is absolutely necessary. If "the Government" decides that this is in "our" best interest, I'd be more interested in going after those businesses that refuse to keep their money in the United States. If they sell American, they should be rewarded for paying back into our system rather than sending cost into a foreign market.

Josh Nauman
Residential Sales Specialist
Eckard's Home Improvement

Our company used to be completely brick-and-mortar until 2005, when we launched our website. At that time, we were down to three employees, including my husband and I. We made our own website completely from scratch and are to this day still using that site, but we now employ around 30 employees. We're an Oregon-based company with no sales tax, and even though our ERP system is quite robust, we'll need to purchase an additional module and add possibly two additional employees to handle the 80,000 to 100,000 transactions we process per year. The idea of being responsible for tracking more than 9,000 sales tax codes and the yearly adjustment to those codes, and answering to each and every one of those states, is daunting. I'd like to suggest that if you're purchasing a product from a state, than the tax should go to that state. It would make e-tailers responsible to their state alone, and the bookkeeping nightmare would go away. Why does our government always have to create such complicated solutions? I'm in the process of contacting my Senator, and I appreciate you bringing this very hot subject to light!

Melissa J. Nolind-Martinson
Owner
A.P.W. Distributing, Inc