The debate over whether the Internet should remain a huge tax-free marketplace for U.S. shoppers probably will not be resolved in 2004, according to policymakers and experts who cited the upcoming presidential election as a political disincentive to action as well as stubborn resistance by some lawmakers and business interests to any effort to tax electronic commerce.
That prospect would be a setback for a quiet but dogged effort led by state officials and some of their allies in the business community to get Congress to authorize state governments to collect taxes on their residents' Internet purchases.
"I would be stunned if there was a vote on this in a presidential election year," said Bartlett Cleland, associate general counsel for the Information Technology Association of America, a high-tech lobbying group that has lobbied against the plan.
The stakes -- by some estimates -- are high. An oft-cited 2001 study by two professors at the University of Tennessee said that the amount of uncollected taxes on e-commerce will grow to $45 billion by 2006.
News source: The Washington Post
