Earlier this week, The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, released a policy analysis on the Marketplace Fairness Act.  In their analysis, the NCPA looked a number of factors that play into the overall Internet sales tax issue, including simplification requirements mandated by the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA), the effectiveness of state use taxes, potential uncollected revenue from online retail, and the potential impact on small Internet-enabled retailers.

After completing a thorough analysis of all of this contributing factors, the NCPA concluded that although states may have legitimate concerns in collecting sales tax from online vendors, the Marketplace Fairness Act is not the way to accomplish this goals.   The NCPA found that the MFA would punish small vendors by requiring them to collect taxes, which is the job of governments, not businesses.  They also recommended that states with use tax laws should enforce compliance rather than burden the private sector.

Read the NCPA’s analysis.