Boozman has come out in favor of S. 1832, the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act, which will impose sales taxes on Internet transactions, so take him out of the conservative pantheon.
The concept of the marketplace fairness act is conservative — that people should pay the taxes rightly due under law.
Under current law, it is nearly impossible for states to enforce their rightfully passed sales and use taxes, because they simply don’t have a method of knowing how much a person owes.
And unfortunately, in the last 30 years or so, Americans have become way too comfortable with the idea that, if they can’t get caught, they can break any laws they want. The same mentality that makes people loot stores when a riot breaks out, knowing the police can’t stop them, also causes otherwise law-abiding people to cheat on their state taxes year after year, simply because they won’t get caught.
Under our constitution, interstate commerce is the proper perview of the federal government. And unlike the takeover of our health care system, the regulation of actual commerce that occurs between the states was explicitly granted to congress.
In order to both help the individual states to collect the taxes that are legally and rightfully due, and to simplify the process of paying those taxes for the citizens, the federal government needs to pass a law allowing some sort of program which will provide interstate tax collection.
This is not a new tax. This is enforcement of an existing tax, controlled by the states, so that those citizens who obey the law are not provided an additional tax burden supporting other citizens who break the law, cheat on their taxes, and laugh about it.
Whether a state has too high of a sales tax against it’s residents is a perfectly fine argument to have regarding conservative policies. But traditionally, conservatives have held that, once a law is passed, government should evenly and fairly enforce that law.
But as it stands now, states can enforce their sales tax only when their citizens buy stuff in the state, or from online companies who also do business in the state. That skewing of the tax code in favor of certain actions over other actions is a decidedly NON-conservative outcome. Government shouldn’t pick winners and losers, nor should tax policy drive business policy. The current sales tax situation does both, and a rational federal policy could correct that imbalance and restore tax fairness for all the citizens of the country.
Those of us who follow our moral obligation to pay our taxes look forward to the day when those who are currently laugh at us while they commit tax fraud will no longer be able to do so with impunity.
boozeman is my senator, I was trying to remember any bad votes but i knew there had to be, when he was in the house he voted for TARP. and tim griffin, my rep voted for cispa and ndaa he will not get my vote we have a libertarian running for his spot now