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Internet Sales Tax Laws Called ‘Awful’

Watchdog group says officials should simplify tax laws, not burden businesses.

Internet sales tax laws are the most “awful,” according to an e-commerce advocacy group.

NetChoice, a coalition of e-commerce businesses and online consumers, put Internet sales tax laws at the top of its Fall 2012 iAWFUL, or Internet advocates’ watchlist for ugly laws.

The organization says such laws would “add new costs and complexity for every sale a business makes to customers from other states.” It adds that lawmakers should instead simplify tax laws.

NetChoice has published the annual list since 2009. It describes these laws as regulations that can “be awful for the innovative services that Internet users love.”

The 2012 list includes six laws NetChoice deems awful. Others on the list include one that allows an appointed person to counter Internet users’ wishes about how they want their accounts handled when they die. Another could increase the number of sites that would need parental consent for children to access them. And another would make it so any advertiser who places an ad on a Pennsylvania site, magazine, newspaper or TV station has a physical presence in that state, and must collect and pay sales taxes.


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