Hillsdale businesses support Internet sales tax

Home City News Hillsdale businesses support Internet sales tax

Michigan became the 26th state to require online retailers — including Amazon, Inc. — to collect Internet sales tax. Starting Oct. 1, shoppers will pay the same six percent sales tax when shopping online as they do in traditional brick-and-mortar shops.

Many business owners, including owner of P&E Distributors in Goodlettsville, Tennessee Donnie Eatherly, support the change.

“A solution to the online sales tax loophole is long overdue. It’s time for the government to stop subsidizing online retailers with special tax treatment. Main Street retailers are ready to compete, we just need our government to stop picking winners and losers,” Eatherley said in an Alliance for Main Street Fairness press release.

Business owners in Hillsdale said they are either indifferent to the change or happy about it because it increases the tax base and levels the playing field between online and brick-and-mortar retailers.

“I personally think online retailers need to be taxed,” Smith’s Flowers owner Jane Stewart said. “We should have been doing it all along, we just never had the laws written in order to do it. It adds to our tax base so it adds to things like police enforcement and firetrucks.”

Both Stewart and Plant Nook Florist owner Michael Lee Thorp said they were already paying the Internet sales tax both on purchases and sales.

“I have always had it set up to pay sales tax. I figure someone has to pay it and I don’t want to pay it. There’s also a service charge sales tax,” Thorp said.

Stewart said the sales tax is part of the website design that both Plant Nook Florist and Smith’s Flowers use.

Andrew Gibbs, owner of Alternaprint Custom Screen Printing and Comic Shop, is indifferent to the change. Since his business operates in other states as well, Gibbs is familiar with the Internet sales tax.

“We don’t do too many sales online. It’s tough for us because we’re from Chicago, and in Illinois they had the tax,” Gibbs said. “We’ve been paying 10 percent there.”

Gibbs said the six percent Michigan Internet sales tax would not affect their overall sales.

The Michigan senate passed the bill last year and was signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder in January 2015.

State Senator Steve Bieda (D-Warren) supported the bill since he believes it promotes market fairness.

“We need to treat our locally-based and state-based businesses on the same even footing as other businesses that do businesses in our state. This bill was looking at trying to treat everyone the same, which is why I thought it was good legislation and it was worthy of support,” Bieda said.

State Senator Tory Rocca (R-Sterling Heights) voted against the bill. His Director of Constituent Relations David Szewczyk said Rocca “has never supported a tax increase in his years as a legislator, so that would be high on the list of reasons as to why he opposed this legislation.”

Professor of political economy Gary Wolfram said while the new sales tax will benefit local and state governments, the city and its business owners should not feel an impact.

“These bills will have an indeterminate positive impact on state and local government, this is correct,” Wolfram said. “I suspect it will have little or no effect on Hillsdale in particular.”