Is Tennessee Trying to Isolate Its' Citizens?

I just received an email where Senator Lamar Alexander proudly shares that he and other members of state congress have figured out how to collect taxes for online sales.  In the email it states that  ”For over a decade, Congress has been debating how to best allow states to collect sales taxes from online retailers in a way that puts Main Street businesses on a level playing field with online retailers.”

The bill is designed to specifically target Internet sales and asks The United States Congress to intervene.  I have a couple of issues with this bill…  First, we chose to purchase online, pay shipping and handling fees and wait for our items because of convenience.  It is not cost effective for a person to get out and drive to look for one item.  Gas prices are ridiculous, we spend hours of time that we could enjoy with friends and family, looking for items and having to tolerate rude customer service.  In addition, stores spend lots of money trying to figure out how to make us forget the purpose of our visit, so that we get sidetracked and impulse shop, thus helping us part with more of our hard earned money.  So in truth, what local businesses complain is that they cannot take as much advantage of us, when we purchase online.

This bill will not “level the playing field”  it will make it too expensive to purchase online, so it will limit our options to in-state only.  

Let’s say the bill passes; What next?  Tennessee has recently allowed TSA to have checkpoints (because we have so many crazy terrorists here…)  Will the next step be to institute checkpoints to check people’s vehicles for “contraband purchases”?  Then what, will we have to pay the taxes to the local TSA? (there’s room for corruption there… sure, why not?)  Will there be a database established of who has been “naughty or nice” in regards to paying sales tax?

I don’t know about you but I do not get a good feeling about where these initiatives are going…