US E-Commerce Tax Panel Still Unanimously Split
Tax-news.com
19 September 1999

The US Advisory Commission on E-Commerce Taxation, meeting in New York last week, was supposed to listen to proposed solutions at this, its third-last full meeting before it has to submit its report to Congress next April. Instead, members coming from the States continued to say that they couldn't run the country without taxes, while other members pointed to a $36bn surplus on their tax collections last year, and said, what's the problem? The members did manage to agree unanimously with a proposal by the Governor Mike Leavitt (Republican-Utah) that the States be asked to propose workable methods of Internet tax collection to the San Francisco meeting of the Commission in December. It seems increasingly unlikely that the Commission will have anything concrete to present to Congress next year, and with the President and Congress happily fighting on how to use a massive budget surplus, it seems decreasingly likely that anyone really cares. This problem won't get solved until the US asset bubble gets pricked, and tax collections fall along with consumer spending, even if then.

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