Cameron Smith: Marketplace Fairness Act might hurt Alabama’s web-based businesses

  As our state government continues to face fiscal challenges, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and a number of other lawmakers are pushing the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) as an integral part of the revenue solution.

  In 1939, Alabama enacted a use tax to prevent businesses outside of the state from enjoying a competitive advantage over in-state businesses required to charge, collect and pay sales tax. Almost 75 years later, interstate commerce has changed radically. Lawmakers imposing the 1939 tax could never have anticipated the relatively recent explosive growth in e-commerce.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Closing the online sales tax loophole

  Alabama’s beleaguered budgets could receive some relief if congress passes legislation to allow states to collect the online sales taxes due them.

  These are not new taxes. They are taxes being avoided and are already owed. It is simply a basic fairness issue. It is not fair that retail stores, who build buildings and hire employees, are made to collect sales taxes while hotline online companies are not required to collect these taxes owed to Alabama.

Joseph O. Patton: Loaves and fishes… or bullets?

  Alabama should certainly be ashamed. We operate under one of the most regressive, unfair and debilitating tax systems in this nation. Yet invariably our fellow citizens of the conservative persuasion inexplicably brag about it… often in the face of those who suffer most from this codified curse.

  Repeatedly Rep. John Knight (D-Montgomery) has led the charge to make a dent in the suffering by introducing legislation to repeal our state’s oppressive sales tax on groceries, yet it has always failed, often at the hands of lawmakers who always crow about what “righteous and God-fearing” people they are and how the Bible guides their actions.