EBay is calling on some 40 million of its users to fight a national legislation that would give states the power to collect sales tax from out-of-state online retailers.
John Donahoe, eBay's CEO, sent the first of the emails out Sunday morning. The message, aimed at users and sellers in eBay's Marketplace, charges that the proposed legislation, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, would burden small entrepreneurs. The Act, which the Senate may vote on this week, applies to businesses with more than $1 million in out-of-state revenues. Donahoe argues that the threshold should be $10 million in revenues or 50 or more employees, which would apply to only large online retailers, like Amazon.
Amazon supports the bill, a spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. Reps from Amazon could not be reached for further comment. The National Retail Federation is also in favor of the measure and argues that it will help states recoup $24 billion in annual income.
The eBay rep who spoke to the publication characterized the email push as "the biggest grass-roots effort by eBay ever." In 2006, then-CEO Meg Whitman sent out an email to 10 million users asking for them to take action in favor of Net Neutrality.
Here's full text of the email:
Subject: Help Us Stop Congress from Imposing New Tax Burdens on You
Dear ,
Keeping costs down is a priority for any businessperson. That’s especially true for people like you—successful entrepreneurs and small businesspeople who know firsthand that every penny counts. But some lawmakers and large retailers want to impose more costs on you by mandating nationwide sales tax collection for your online business, whether you sell through eBay, other marketplaces or your own site. Are you prepared to collect sales taxes in the more than 9,600 tax jurisdictions across the US? Are you prepared for the potential to be audited by out-of-state tax collectors? These burdens would be the result of proposed legislation. We are fighting on your behalf to prevent this from happening.
Over the years, I’ve heard repeatedly from eBay sellers like you that expanding Internet sales taxes will hurt your ability to grow, create jobs, and fuel competition that creates value for consumers. That’s why for more than 15 years, our company has persistently fought efforts to expand Internet sales taxes and impose new burdens on small businesses.
The threat of Congress passing a bad Internet Sales Tax bill is real. For the first time in over a decade the U.S. Senate recentlyheld a vote on the subject. There was support for some change to the current sales tax rules, but all the details need to be worked out. And make no mistake; the current bills penalize smallonline businesses.
This legislation treats you and big multi-billion dollar online retailers - such as Amazon - exactly the same. Those fighting for this change refuse to acknowledge that the burden on businesses like yours is far greater than for a big national retailer. It may harm your ability to grow and costs jobs, including yours. And if small businesses like yours can’t succeed and grow, that undermines competition, consumer choice and low prices.Amazon, for example, has fought harder than any other company to require all businesses to collect sales taxes online,while also seeking special tax benefits as it expands its warehouses throughout the country. It’s bad tax policy. And it’s not fair.
Proposed Internet Sales Tax legislation that threatens small businesses is wrongheaded and bad. But we can fight this together. The solution is simple: if Congress passes online sales tax legislation, we believe small businesses with less than 50 employees or less than $10 million in annual out-of-state sales should be exempt from the burden of collecting sales taxes nationwide. To put that in perspective, Amazon does more than $10 million of sales every 90 minutes. So we believe this is a reasonable exemption to protect businesses like yours from unreasonable tax burdens. That’s what we’re fighting for, and what big companies such as Amazon are fighting against.
Please join me and let your Members of Congress know they should protect small online businesses, not potentially put them out of business. Click here to make your voice heard. Your elected representatives will appreciate hearing from you.
John Donahoe
President and CEO
eBay Inc.
Image via Getty, Hector Mata
No comments:
Post a Comment