The following appeared in an editorial in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday:
Retailers call it "showrooming," and they resent it: Customers come into their stores to try on clothes, check out flat-screen TVs, browse through new books, get fitted for shoes, and then they leave and buy from a website. Many of the online sellers have a big pricing advantage: They don't charge sales taxes.
That's unfair to the brick-and-mortar retailers who, by law, have to collect sales taxes. In theory, consumers are supposed to calculate and send taxes to the state for their online purchases. Few people bother to do this. The result is lost revenue to state and local governments, an unjustified competitive edge to Internet sellers, and empty storefronts.
State laws, though, are hard to enforce, and they encourage dot-coms to shift operations to other states to avoid the tax obligation.
It's time for a consistent rules for taxes on online purchases.
Last month, in a test vote, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly supported the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would make clear that states can require tax collection by online merchants. It would streamline interstate commerce by requiring participating states simplify their tax systems.
The federal legislation has struggled in recent years to build bipartisan support. But the 75-24 vote in the Senate signaled some real momentum.
The latest version of the act would exempt merchants that report less than $1 million in annual remote revenues, a bid to allay fears that the burden of tax collection would crush startup Internet businesses. In our view, that's too high an exemption.
Internet commerce is no longer a fragile emerging market. It is a huge piece of the national economy. We're past the day that collecting sales tax would stop an Amazon from coming along.
Congress, see to it that this is a fair fight.