Senator Shaheen’s Selective Defense Of Small Business Owners

The Internet http://
Image credit: cnet

New Hampshire’s Congressional delegation is unified in its defense of the Granite State from efforts to make online purchases taxable. Their primary objection, and I’ll use Senator Shaheen as my whipping donkey for this, is the burden it puts on small business owners.

As a former small business owner, I know that most small businesses operate on small profit margins and struggle to keep overhead low. That’s especially true for small online retailers. It is unacceptable to impose major new administrative costs on small businesses while making it harder to compete with big-box retailers. Let’s keep internet commerce tax-free and wide open, and let’s protect New Hampshire’s competitive advantage as a state 100 percent free of sales taxes.

She’s referring to an act of Congress called the Marketplace Fairness Act. And she has been consistent on other moves to impose internet taxes including a recent SCOTUS case. But why not use the same logic for everything else the national government does?

Senator Shaheen’s history (at every level of government) is riddled with examples where expanding the size and scope of government was the number one priority. The expansion of the bureaucratic state is the definition of administrative costs in the form of raising taxes to feed it.

The entire all Gurl Democrat delegation opposed tax reform which let families and job creators keep more. More for them to make decisions about and less for the same administrative state that will, ironically, take in more by letting people make purchasing decisions instead of politicians, regulators, and bureaucrats.

They make no sense.

If it is especially true that administrative costs be they new or major make it harder for businesses to compete, then it must also be true that any costs forced down upon the states and their job creators and their families do likewise.

Why hasn’t this sliver of wisdom prompted more spleen venting by former small business owner™ Shaheen (or any of New Hampshire’s equally empathetic All Gurl Delegation) when it comes to anything else the Government does?

Author

  • Steve MacDonald

    Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor, Executive Editor, assistant editor, Editor, content curator, complaint department, Op-ed editor, gatekeeper (most likely to miss typos because he has no editor), and contributor at GraniteGrok.com. Steve is also a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, The Republican Volunteer Coalition, has worked for or with many state and local campaigns and grassroots groups, and is a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

    View all posts
Share to...