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BNA Bloomberg – Washington’s Marketplace Sales Tax Law Heading for Battle

BNA Bloomberg – Washington’s Marketplace Sales Tax Law Heading for Battle

“We definitely anticipate a legal challenge,” Steve DelBianco, executive director of the e-commerce trade association NetChoice, told Bloomberg BNA July 10. “NetChoice and the American Catalog Mailers Association are now developing legal arguments and raising funding for a lawsuit.”

DelBianco said Washington’s $10,000 threshold is particularly problematic, calling it “a significant burden on America’s small businesses. Washington’s new law reaches the tiniest of businesses anywhere in the country if they happen to have customers in Washington state.”

Washington’s imposition of tax and reporting requirements on marketplace facilitators “would be unique, since these facilitators are not the seller of record,” DelBianco added. He accused the new law of targeting facilitators and marketplaces in what amounts to discrimination against electronic commerce, which is prohibited under the Internet Tax Freedom Act.

“We’ll also challenge the privacy violations that this would bring on Washington residents, as the state would now be collecting data on their personal and sometimes sensitive Internet purchases,” he said.

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