E-commerce: Click and pay

Both parties are getting keener to tax sales on the internet

Apr 6th 2013 | WASHINGTON, DC |From the print edition
[Greg Ip]THE past few years have brought little relief for pinched state finances. But on March 22nd 75 senators, including majorities of both parties, approved an amendment to a proposed federal budget which, if enacted, would allow states to collect taxes on sales by internet retailers based in other states.

It makes no economic sense to tax sales in shops and over the internet differently. The prohibition is constitutional. In 1992 the Supreme Court ruled that states could not force out-of-state retailers to collect tax on sales to residents unless Congress, which oversees interstate commerce, said so. Only retailers with a physical presence—a “nexus”, in the legal jargon—in the state could be taxed.

Silver Lining: Amid Devastation, Many Still See Gains In Burst Tech Bubble

Even Sufferers Cite the Value Of Innovation and Base For Longer-Term Growth — Looking Again to the Fed

By Greg Ip

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

2497 words

20 March 2001

The Wall Street Journal

A1

English

(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. economy struggles with the bursting of the high-tech bubble, here’s an improbable question: Could there also have been a bright side?

Billions of dollars went down the drain in the past few years, to support high-tech companies that never made a profit. Years of entrepreneurial effort by the nation’s best and brightest were flushed away on failed business plans. Massive wealth was created, and then destroyed, leaving shattered confidence in its wake.

Yet the bubble also may have done society a huge favor. The technology-stock boom fertilized new technologies and business innovations, and it galvanized old-economy companies into accelerating their own adoption of these innovations.