New Hampshire news outlet, The Keene Sentinel, recently published an editorial that argued the Marketplace Fairness Act would be unfair to New Hampshire because the state does not have a sales tax and would gain nothing by forcing its businesses to collect for other states. As currently written, the Marketplace Fairness Act would force businesses to collect and remit sales taxes to over 9,600 taxing jurisdictions nationwide. This new sales tax mandate would be burdensome to any small business in any state, but it is particularly unfair to businesses located in states that have made it state law to not collect sales taxes.

“The key word in the Marketplace Fairness Act is fairness. The use of the word in the name is supposed to denote a leveling of the field between online stores and traditional “bricks and mortar” retailers. The latter have to collect whatever sales taxes apply wherever they’re located. Theoretically, so do online sellers, but that rarely happened until Internet behemoths such as Amazon, Walmart.com and HomeDepot.com found they had physical space — warehouses, distribution centers, etc. — in so many states that they could hardly keep up with where to collect and where not to.”

The article went on to express that the Marketplace Fairness Act as constituted would hurt New Hampshire businesses more than help them. “We’d support an effort that holds to the former Supreme Court standard that a sale is a sale at the seller’s end, and only requires a sales tax if that seller is located where one is in effect.”

To read the opinion piece and how the Marketplace Fairness Act would impact small businesses in New Hampshire, please visit the Keene Sentinel.