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U.S. Tax Watchdog Group Says No To Big Brother Tax On E-Commerce

Citizens Against Government Waste Press Release

21 February 2000

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) America’s largest taxpayer watchdog group has released a scathing report on the government’s attempts to tax commerce conducted over the Internet. In "Control, Alt, Delete: How Taxation Threatens to Shut Down Commerce on the Internet", CAGW reveals the ramifications of allowing Big Brother to meddle in the burgeoning e-commerce market.

"American consumers do not want Big Brother taxing their e-commerce," remarked CAGW President Thomas A. Schatz. "Trying to tax the Internet is like trying to tax a garage sale – it can’t be done, and it would require resources that would far outweigh any return."

The report outlines the great promise of the Internet as an engine for economic growth, and the danger to that potential inherent in proposals to tax e-commerce. While many tax-hungry public officials claim that the Internet must be taxed to protect the economic status quo, Control, Alt, Delete demonstrates that a tax-free Internet sets an example that should be followed throughout America's economy.

"Proposals to tax the Internet are predicated on an intrinsic government claim on our earnings," the report states. "This is reason alone to dismiss these proposals. Further, implicit in all the arguments for Internet taxation is the protection of the status quo. The government’s predilection to pick winners and losers in the marketplace through the tax code (and other policies) is a cancer that should not be spread to the Internet… If freedom and limited government work in cyberspace, they can work on Main Street."

"Taxing e-commerce would put a bureaucrat on every cyber-corner," said Schatz. "Big government solutions would only result in killing the goose laying these golden eggs."

Control, Alt, Delete is the latest in a series of reports by CAGW that will focus on the critical interaction between government and technology. CAGW is a 600,000-member nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.

The full text of the Report is available from: http://www.cagw.org/mediacenter/newsrel/search/00-02-16-a.htm

 

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