Baby Bell Bashing

...Main Street businesses, governors say, suffer unfair price competition from efficient, nexusevading dot-coms...

...The Administration favors an extension of the moratorium but has not spoken on the sales tax matter.At the stafflevel, there is little confusion about the legislation or the perilous state of the economy:"This is no time to start taxing the Internet," a White House aide told me...

...What that means is that politically there are two sorts of environmental issues: values issues, on which voters express a high level of environmental piety, but around which their votes rarely turn.And NIMBY issues, about which everyone agrees...

...If you buy a product from a store or mail-order merchant in your own state, you must pay...

...And the corresponding Quill Supreme Court decision prevents one state from reaching into another to collect taxes...

...Gilmore says a thriving economy---spurred by Internet freedom~ is more important to state budgets than a new world wide web of taxes...

...Bush may want to tell his brother...

...States have been trying for decades to find a way around this~to collect taxes outside their jurisdictions...

...Stay on the right side of the local issues, and, on the national level, take the case to voters that property rights and free-market solutions make for a better environment,just as they make better products and services.You can log trees, as long as you love 'era too...

...They will vote to extend it only if Congress abolishes Quill and permits states to start taxing cross-border Internet and catalogue sales...

...Batting for the governors in Washington, a group of senators led by Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon is now tying the idea of a state-run Internet sales tax cartel to the expiring moratorium...

...A lonely group of governors from tech-savvy states like Colorado (Bill Owens) ,Virginia (Jim Gilmore), Massachusetts (Jane Swift) and California (with noted tax killer Gray Davis at the helm) oppose the cartel.They know if states are granted new remote collection powers, e-commerce operations will just move their servers to the Bahamas...

...The reckless nexus of politicians and taxes never seems to come unbound...

...California Republicans and Democrats alike oppose offshore drilling...

...Forty-four governors, including First Brother Jeb of Florida, have written Congress laying claim to this digital prize...

...But another pesky constitutional provision, the Compact Clause, prevents the formation of their own sales tax alliance without federal approval...

...Use-taxes" are supposed to correct for this, requiring in-state citizens to keep track of their out-of-state mailorder purchases and annually remit, say, five percent of the total to their home state.Any volunteers...

...Instead of caving into bad science and perverse plans, the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates argues that the GOP should master the art of turning environmental pieties into sound policies...

...A similar political jujitsu is needed on the environment, persuading city-dwelling Americans that government mismanagement is as dangerous to the environment as any chemical.What good is it to stop timber harvesting if it leads to three times as many trees destroyed by forest fires...

...Ordinary sales taxes are fair game and still apply, just as they do to mail-order catalogue sales.Which is to say, mostly in theory...

...In farm country, both Republicans and Democrats oppose the Environmental Protection Agency's limits on pesticides...

...If the mail-order company is based somewhere else, you're probably off the hook--some states have cobbled together reciprocal sales tax agreements...

...Not convinced...

...With the world economy turning down and budgets constricting, the governors are restless.At least 17 states are hiking taxes on everything from Research estimates online sales will total $1.3 trillion by 2003...

...But all six candidates opposed offshore that's small stuff compared to the taxdrilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexi- ing potential of the Net...

...Same effect...

...Remember the GOP's long-standing anti-welfare sentiment went nowhere until voters were convinced that welfare was bad not only for taxpayers, but for poor people too...

...Contrary to widespread belief in places like Silicon Valley, the ban prohibits only Internet access taxes, along with "discriminatory" levies on Internet-specific businesses...

...K 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 SEPTEMBER/OCToBER 2OO...

...We're against Internet taxes of any kind" George W...

...TAX HARMONIZATION THREATENS THE NET BY BRET SWANSON October 21, a widely supported three-year moraO n torium on Internet taxes, signed by Big Bubba himself, draws ominously to an end...

...But the Constitution's pesky Commerce Clause gets in the way: only Congress can regulate interstate commerce...

...No physical nexus (that is, no common physical location uniting buyer and seller), no tax...

...Even offline, the machinery of sales taxes is suitably arcane...

...Why destroy the Hudson in order to save it ? But changing the framing of this issue will require consistent leadership...

...On the other hand, every Maskan politician supports exploring for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge...

...The key to all sales taxes is the word nexus, meaning connection, from the Latin nectere: to bind...

...Forrester RECKLESS NEXUS co...

...If you go online in Massachusetts to buy a gift for your Michigander mother from a company based in Seattle with a warehouse in Nevada...well, who knows...

...The green machine may be only a paper tiger, but if it scares the White House crooked on environmental issues, just its well-practiced roaring may be enough...

...So pro-growth candidates running scared should think again...

...How ironic that such remedial education should be necessary after a decade of competitive tax cutting in the states led to economic growth and overflowing budgets...

...Taxing online sales is the level-playing-field solution...