Today, the House and Senate passed a $1.15 trillion bipartisan spending bill which will fund the government until September 2016. Thanks in part to the efforts of the eBay Main Street community, this comprehensive appropriations bill did not include destructive remote sales tax collection and remittance requirements for online sellers. This result is a huge win for U.S. Internet-enabled small businesses.

In addition to keeping the government’s doors open, the spending package extends a provision to prohibit taxing Internet access, known as the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA), until the end of September. This is significant because although we have defeated the Internet sales tax measure in the immediate term, it is clear that Internet sales tax proponents will continue to aggressively push their agenda in 2016. In fact, next month, the Senate will consider a permanent extension of ITFA (see our blog post on that bill here). As you may know, proponents of the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) and the Remote Transactions Parity Act (RTPA) routinely attempt to attach their sales tax bills to ITFA, even though the two are in no way related. If we can prevent this, it will be another huge win for small Internet-enabled businesses throughout the U.S.