Op eds

eor felt he didn't have the patience to write up a response to this Press Herald opinion piece , so I sort of view the following as a commission, in a way - inspired by his frothing at the mouth, I took some time and tried to put it into words that I hope sound thoughtful and impersonal. And I'm sure they're never going to publish it at the Press Herald, so I might as well post it here. :)

It has been proposed that Maine assess a state sales tax on items bought online, with the argument that this would help the small business owner in Maine to compete against the mega-stores which sell online, such as Amazon.

Brick-and-mortar stores already pay more to get the products into their store than the big online sellers charge the end customer. We've already seen that problem with Walmart, that's why they kill local businesses - Walmart can sell any item at a lower price than it costs a small stores to buy that same item. Cost to the consumer is never again going to be a competing point for any small, local, brick-and-mortar store. A sales tax which the consumer doesn't see until the last moment will not change their mind about buying from an online source.

It's stated in your article, "it turns otherwise honest people into tax cheats if they don't keep track of their online purchases every year and voluntarily pay what they owe to the state at tax time." Maine already has a Use Tax which is assessed on all Mainers to cover anything bought out of state, instituted years ago when it became evident that people were going across the border into New Hampshire because NH had no sales tax. One would have to choose to not pay the Use Tax, and that would flag a return for potential audit.

A Federal law allowing all states to collect on businesses which don't have physical presence in their state will certainly hurt small businesses within Maine who are trying to use the Internet to widen their customer base. Anyone from Maine who exports to another state would need to keep track of at least forty-nine different sales tax laws. Larger businesses will take this difficulty in stride easily, as they already have people who are paid to deal with that sort of thing, but one year of this mess would convince most small business owners that expanding to larger markets is too much trouble. The only people who could make money off this scenario would be companies who write software for doing taxes, who could then sell the special '50 States Tax Codes' packages.

If we want to help our economy we need to encourage our local niche businesses, people who are making specialty items here in Maine such as the hand tools made by Lie-Nielsen in Warren or the pens made by American Heritage, our growers of produce, seed and seedlings. There are an incredible variety of goods which are actually being made here in small shops. If they wish to export their products to other states we should support that, not make doing business more difficult for them.