El Rushbo On The Proposed Internet Sales Tax

Rush Limbaugh on the proposed Internet sales tax at Facebook:

I want to specifically address people who responded to my last post in opposition to internet sales tax by saying it “isn’t fair” to small business. The reality is that I don’t think small businesses should have to pay sales tax either. In fact, there actually is no national sales tax; each and every sales tax is state imposed – the bill before the senate allows states to impose sales tax on internet business. The states of our nation went the first 150 years without imposing a general sales tax, and I want to do it again. Smaller government, less taxation. In fact, the Whiskey Rebellion took place because of taxation on a specific commodity (as did the Boston Tea Party, the namesake of an organization to which a large number of you belong). 

I cannot support a new tax just because other people have to pay an old tax. I cannot support strangling a new type of business because an old type of business is already being strangled – I support rescuing the old type of business. 

With that said, those who fundamentally oppose the concept of internet sales as “unfair” are misguided. Selling goods and services over the internet is not unfair, it’s innovation. It’s an improvement of efficiency, it’s a goodness to consumers. In the same way the assembly line and the cotton gin and roads, automobiles, trains and airplanes streamlined business, increased competition and reduced cost to the consumer in years past, the internet does as well. What’s fantastic about the internet, though, is that it’s free. Any small business owner on the planet can open their doors people halfway around the world without hitting their bottom line. The internet doesn’t hurt small business, it only revolutionizes it. 

Yes, people who run traditional brick-and-mortar shops will have to step up or step out. But it’s not “unfair” to small business, it’s a tool of success that can dramatically increase profits for those willing to adapt. 

Isn’t that what we want? A competitive market that changes and revolutionizes, updates and inspires and moves our great national engine forward, all while saving consumers money? Or are we going to whine and drag our heels as time pulls us into the future, and claim that not taxing other people is “unfair?” If we did that, we’d sound awfully like Democrats.

 Thanks for your time.