WASHINGTON -- Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow Hanns Kuttner will testify before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow, July 24, at a hearing on the Marketplace Equity Act of 2011. He is expected to argue that the notion of "undue burden" on out-of-state sellers has been changed by technology, which has reduced the cost of many tasks, particularly information-heavy tasks. Comparing today to 1992, when the Supreme Court last addressed what constitutes an undue burden, Kuttner's testimony will note that if consumers or businesses "want to know what the sales tax will be in any particular jurisdiction, they can just Google it.
Kuttner's most recent Hudson Institute report on e-fairness, entitled "Future Marketplace: Free and Fair," shows that as technology enables more sales across state lines, it increases the dollar volume of sales on which state sales tax is not collected. In 2012, the report estimates that these sales will top $320 billion. The paper is available for download in PDF here.
Hanns Kuttner is available to comment on e-fairness, online sales taxes, and tax policy.
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For more information, please contact: James Bologna: 202-974-6456, jbologna@hudson.org