Palin to House GOP on Internet Sales Tax Bill: 'No New Taxes'

On Tuesday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin urged the House to stop the Senate’s internet sales tax bill, claiming that it would only grow government, increase taxes, and drive out and burden small online businesses.

“I bet that once the tax increase is explained, your constituents won’t want you to contribute to government growth via increased internet taxes,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post. “And that’s what this is all about. House GOP, read your constituent’s lips: No New Taxes.”

On Monday, the Senate passed a bill that would allow states to collect sales tax on merchandise bought on the internet even if those purchases were made from companies out of state. The bill faces a much more difficult road in the House, though, especially if Republicans refuse to vote for the measure. 

Palin said the new internet sales tax increase “must be stopped in the House” and emphasized that it was not “legit” to claim the bill would somehow “level the playing field” for brick and mortar retailers. 

To the contrary, Palin said the bill would unnecessarily burden mom and pop businesses that are “small government champions” of the middle class. She claimed the bill “is actually a boon to the big online powerhouses like Amazon who can afford the insane paperwork that comes with complying with government’s newest tax.” 

At the same time, Palin said, “the smaller mid-size online operations and smaller brick and mortar businesses, many family-owned with small staffs” will be “swamped with the regulatory paperwork of complying with the tax requirements for all these different states.”

“This will hit these smaller companies right where their margin of profit is, which means that this will cost jobs because when businesses lose profitability, they lay off workers or shut down,” Palin wrote. 

When these smaller businesses go out of business, companies like Amazon will benefit even more; that is why she suggested “Amazon doesn’t sweat it – in fact they support” the tax. 

“More and more shopping is done online today, and every smart brick and mortar mom and pop wants to get in on that,” Palin wrote. “And when they do, they should be allowed to produce by the sweat of their brow and ethically grow beyond being just a small online operation without worrying about a massive regulatory burden if they gross more than $1 million in sales in a year.”

As an example, Palin said if she wanted to order the re-release of Dr. George Sheehan’s book Running and Being, which Palin said greatly influenced and motivated her, she could get the book at Amazon, and the online retailer would “have no problem calculating the minutia of sales tax regulations for your state because they have a boatload of employees (and lobbyists) to deal with this burden.”

She also noted that the “free” sales tax calculating software all companies will receive for compliance is not really “free” because it is being “paid for by the very same people this new tax will hit in the pocketbook.”

Palin, the Tea Party champion, appropriately titled her post, “Taxed Enough Already?”