The State of New York is trying to force large online retailers to collect and remit sales taxes for purchases made via the Internet. Amazon.com is suing to stop this insidious government power grab.

So your Internet business isn’t as big as Amazon’s (yet)? You might be thinking “What’s the big deal?”

Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Independent, you should be concerned.

Here’s why it is important to you.

The underlying theory behind the tax collection is that sales online make you the tax collector for the welfare state even in states where you don’t have a physical presence. Imagine the chaos if you had to collect and remit sales taxes to all 50 states, taxes up north to Canada, and across the Atlantic pond as a VAT tax for the European Union coffers. 99.9% of today’s Internet marketers would either be guilty of tax evasion or go out of business trying to comply.

This is exactly what’s in store if these politicians and bureaucrats get the chance to make you an involuntary tax collector to pay for their bridges to nowhere and other pork barrel projects.

Fortunately, there are the Amazon’s of ecommerce who have the deep pockets to fight the government.

Note that this is not a unique situation. For years, the National Governors Association, its county and municipal counterparts have been arguing that they should have the right to tax the Hades out of Internet transactions to pay for excessive spending habits. Ayn Rand referred to these types as “second-handers.”

That’s being polite.

What can you do to fight them?

1. Post your support for Amazon’s fight against New York on your blog and encourage others to do so.

2. Let your elected politicians at the local, state, and federal level know that you’ll do everything in your power to ensure their opponents are elected if they so much as think about trying to turn you into a tax collector.

3. Order a copy of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” or Harry Browne’s “How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World” via Amazon and ship it to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of "Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed," "How to Create Your Own Internet Business Without a Lawyer for Under $175," and the creator of Website Legal Forms Generator^TM. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.