SALES TAX: Here's other side of story

Your editorial favoring electronic sales tax collection for interstate commerce tells just one side of the story and contains totally false assumptions. The bookstore manager must realize that, as an actual example, a book he sells at the maximum price of $28 can be purchased slightly used online for $8.50 plus shipping (no, shipping can’t be avoided — the buyer pays directly or indirectly). And now there is Kindle as well! Sadly, the local bookstore will probably go out of business ultimately because ownership of hard-copy books is becoming less desirable and bookstores increasingly cannot compete — sales tax has nothing to do with it. When that happens, the owner and employees will find successful jobs in other places, the building space will be occupied by others, property taxes will not tumble but continue to rise and public institutions will continue to thrive as they do now — all without the tax that you advocate. Your doom and gloom forecast has no basis — if it did, it would already be happening. Your prediction of massive cuts in services is totally unjustified.

Our taxes are already rising continually — we all work an increasingly greater percentage of each year just to pay our taxes as it is. Your proposal would involve increasing the tax bureaucracy, both federal and state, to oversee collections, thus adding ever more to our cost of living.

Sales tax on e-commerce is already collected via our state income tax. I presume the writer of your editorial declares all such taxes on their return.

ROGER RYAN

Coeur d’Alene