Conservative group releases poll on online sales tax collections in Ohio
The R Street Institute and the National Taxpayers Union say the results should prompt Ohio’s congressional delegation to think twice before backing federal legislation on the issue.
“From our perspective, this is a really dangerous expansion of state tax authority,” said Andrew Moylan, executive director if the R Street Institute. “We have a system where states are rightly sovereign within their own borders, but their power ends at borders’ edge, because we can’t have states trying to exert control over commerce in other states.”…
…R Street and the National Taxpayers Union decided to poll Ohioans on the issue; about 400 likely voters in the state responded a telephone survey early last month.
Among the results, 56 percent of respondents said they opposed allowing states to require online retailers to collect sales taxes on out-of-state purchases. More than 60 percent said they seldom or never buy things online.
The results have a margin of error of about 5 percentage points.
Moylan acknowledged arguments from supporters of the Marketplace Fairness Act, but he said the result would not be fair to all of the businesses involved.
The proposed federal legislation “would create a totally unlevel playing field, where if you’re a brick-and-mortar retailer, you get to use this simple, easy standard of collecting based on where you’re located, whereas you would be forcing online businesses to have to jump through all of these hoops to figure out tax obligations across the country.
He added, “There are 46 states with sales taxes, there are 9,998 separate taxing jurisdictions across the country. Asking online businesses to be accountable for all of those … is the exact opposite of a level playing field.”
