Yesterday, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT/3) introduced the Remote Transactions Parity Act, legislation that would impose burdensome remote sales tax collection and remittance requirements on Internet-enabled small businesses. This legislation is quite similar to the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) and, if passed into law, will:

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed the permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) by a voice vote. ITFA, which was first passed into law in 1998, bars federal, state and local governments from taxing Internet access and from imposing discriminatory Internet-only taxes. This is incredibly important as ITFA is one of the laws that allows internet commerce to exist. ITFA must be renewed periodically, and was done so yesterday by the House.

Yesterday the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law held a hearing on state nexus and taxation issues. Although the point of the hearing was not to discuss the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) specifically, tax collection in particular was a frequent topic of discussion amongst all participants – both Members and witnesses. Not surprisingly, participants sympathetic to big retail and money hungry states continue