I found the article about taxing sales and services on the Internet, written by Matt Berger of your Washington Bureau (Business, July 16), revealing in what it says about taxing and spending in Illinois.
Taxes should be levied for services provided. We pay for fire protection, police protection, road construction and maintenance, water and sewer services and things like that.
What is the service furnished by a government for sales over the Internet? I cannot think of any that exist or any that would be of any value. Thankfully there is little or no regulation of it at this time, and I hope there will be none.
For Chicago and the National League of Cities to be lamenting the “lost sales tax revenue” shows that these governmental agencies are just interested in taxing for the sake of taxing and not so they can provide more and better services.
I hope the federal government will pass the Internet Tax Freedom Act because local entities see taxing Internet sales as a method of obtaining funds without any cost–and they are jumping at the idea of such easy money without any thought of the propriety of their actions. Taxing Internet sales and spending the money on schools or other unrelated programs is not to be allowed.
