During a speech this week from the Senate floor, ecommerce champion Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) spoke out against the Remote Transactions Parity Act (RTPA). Introduced on Tuesday by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT/3), this legislation is just as onerous as the ironically named Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) in that it would place extremely burdensome remote sales tax collection and remittance requirements on Internet-enabled small businesses. Senator Wyden shared a variety of concerns about the RTPA, including the fact that it will create a de facto privatized tax collecting bureaucracy that hurts small business while making sensitive information needlessly vulnerable to hackers. He also encouraged his colleagues in Congress to reject efforts to pair RTPA with the highly popular extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA), calling such a plan “legislative malpractice” and arguing that the two bills are inherently contradictory: the ITFA encourages innovation while the RTPA kills it.

eBay thanks Senator Wyden for his continued support of small internet-enabled businesses and helping to protect their ability to innovate and thrive.

If you agree that the RTPA is bad legislation, tell your members of Congress that you oppose harmful tax laws that stifle business growth and harm consumers.