I appreciate Jerry’s response to my letter to the editor. It seems like we agree that the Marketplace Fairness Act is the best way to address collecting sales tax from online retailers. Even though we agree with that one point, I think Jerry’s other views are misguided.
Jerry suggested that Bakk and Dill aren’t responsible for their votes, because this new tax was included in an omnibus spending bill and Bakk and Dill were only two of the legislators who voted. I think most people would agree with me that politicians are responsible for their votes even if the legislation is complicated. Jerry also suggested that overwhelming bipartisan support passed this bill. The vote in the Minnesota House was 69-65 and in the Minnesota Senate it was 36-30 and it broke basically along party lines. The Democrats didn’t even get all their members. As majority leader in the Senate, Bakk can lead and control what ends up in the legislation, so he’s more responsible for it than other state senators.
Jerry also suggests that this new tax is fair, but it isn’t, because it targets only one type of advertisement. Amazon, one of the thousands of online businesses that will no longer contract with Minnesota websites, can still advertise in Minnesota and still not collect taxes if they change from performance marketing to pay-per-click, TV or newspaper advertisement. And this new tax does nothing to address online retailers that don’t use performance marketing. But the law gets worse, because it also equates independent contractors as physical “nexuses” of companies that hire them. So, if an out-of-state website wanted to host their website on Boreal’s servers, they couldn’t without violating this new tax law. They also couldn’t hire a Minnesota web designer, graphic designer, webmaster or any other business in Minnesota without running afoul of the law.
The only thing this law did was hurt the 5,200+ Minnesota businesses that formed a half a billion a year industry in Minnesota and paid $35 million a year in income taxes. To hurt one thriving industry in favor of another isn’t fair. I think any American can understand that.
Bryan Hansel
Grand Marais
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