Shortchanging state businesses

America saw two new records this Black Friday: the amount of goods purchased online and the share of goods purchased on mobile phones. More than $3.3 billion was spent in online shopping on Black Friday, and mobile purchases accounted for $1.2 billion alone. Consumers have grown to love online shopping, which is why brickand-mortar stores have embraced online sales as well.

There isn’t a level playing field today for our local Janesville, Wausau, Brookfield, Waukesha and Green Bay businesses. Due to an antiquated pre-Internet Supreme Court decision, out-of-state online sellers aren’t required to collect sales taxes on online purchases into Wisconsin, putting our local Main Street retailers at a competitive disadvantage.

Local businesses can compete on service, prices and selection, but their competitors are given a 5-plus% head start when an out-of-state company isn’t required to collect the same sales taxes as local businesses. With all the talk about the importance of helping local businesses and preserving jobs, this hardly sounds like a policy consistent with that goal.

To be clear, it’s not just Wisconsin businesses that are harmed by these policies. It’s also police departments, firefighters, public schools and infrastructure, because state sales taxes fund all of these important necessities. In 2012 alone, Wisconsin lost more than $140 million in revenue because of the lack of efairness.

Gov. Scott Walker has done an admirable job at chipping away the state’s budget shortfall through wise spending. But there is only so much he can do alone, especially with a $140 million and growing collection gap and a projected $700 million shortfall in the 2017-’19 biennial budget. Wisconsin needs federal policy that supports a balanced budget.

Beyond the state-level impact, stories that are also worrying are those of local towns that are forced to make impossible budget decisions because of this status quo. Declining revenues are forcing municipalities to cut the jobs of hardworking Wisconsin citizens.

So when Black Friday online sales reached over $3 billion, breaking the alltime record high, our communities missed out on millions of dollars that could go to supporting jobs. And on Cyber Monday, the same happened, as Americans purchased $3.45 billion of goods for the holiday season.

But states can’t wait forever for action in Washington. Some states are pushing the bounds of earlier court decisions by passing laws requiring businesses to collect online sales taxes because Congress has failed to establish a national framework to do so. In Wisconsin, the law requires shoppers to pay their owed sales tax on Internet purchases in the form of a use tax, when they file their income taxes. This patchwork of state laws is not only confusing for consumers but it is confusing for businesses. A single federal solution would solve that problem.

This is not about paying new taxes; it’s about collecting a tax that is already owed by Wisconsin state law. It transcends whether you are Republican, Democrat or independent. At the end of the day, it boils down to providing a level playing field for small businesses, especially those making up the backbone of our communities here in Wisconsin. Action is difficult and requires leadership, but we can’t continue to preserve a policy that hollows out our Main Streets and punishes local stores over out-ofstate online retailers.

This holiday season let’s come together and give our elected officials the support they need to do the right thing and finally pass efairness legislation.