E-business

Network World - Some things never happen the way that us pundits expect. Back on Independence Day in 1999 I wrote this about government taxing the purchase of goods over the Internet: "I fully believe in the ingenuity of the government when it comes to imposing taxes. We will be paying these taxes soon." Well, "soon" has not happened yet, but maybe it is getting closer.

I also wrote about Internet taxation in 2003, in particular about an effort to deal with the impossibly complex landscape of local taxes. Considering the "Main Street" pressure from local merchants trying to compete with Amazon there was no way that I would have predicted in 1999 that Internet retailers would still not be required to collect sales taxes.

Considering the "Main Street" pressure from local merchants trying to compete with Amazon there was no way that I would have predicted in 1999 that Internet retailers would still not be required to collect sales taxes. The problems I talked about in 1999 are still with us and just as hard to solve. In addition, the sales tax shortfall in 2012 is not as large as was predicted back in 1999. Eleven billion dollars is real money, but it's small potatoes when it comes to the $790 billion in total sales tax revenue for 2012. But governments like tax revenues even when they are relatively small amounts of money.