Copyright 1999 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Chicago
Sun-Times
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August 30, 1999, MONDAY, Late
Sports Final Edition
SECTION: FINANCIAL; Pg. 49
LENGTH: 244 words
HEADLINE:
Commission ponders Net taxing laws
BYLINE: Heather
Pauly
BODY:
Last year, Congress passed the Internet
Tax Freedom Act, which placed a three-year moratorium on new taxes on the
Internet, but the tax-free zone may not last much longer than that.
Congress also created the Advisory Committee on Electronic Commerce to
study taxation on the Internet and recommend laws.
The 19-member
commission, which includes three governors and 16 leaders in government and
executives of technology companies, plans to hold public hearings Sept. 14 and
15 in New York to discuss the issue. The commission is scheduled to hold two
more meetings, in San Francisco and Dallas, before it submits a report to
Congress in March.
The commission, which met for the first time in June,
is taking its task seriously.
"At stake is the future of commerce in
America," Virginia Gov. James Gilmore told the commission. He said that one of
the main goals of the group is to determine how to "levy a system of taxation
based on thousands of geographic boundaries over a medium that operates in an
environment with no boundaries. How do we do that? Do we want to? Is it possible
to do?"
But another commission member, Stanley Sokul, who is an
independent consultant to the Association for Interactive Media and a consultant
with Davidson & Co., said it would be a vexing challenge: "It would be
asking the Internet to comply with thousands of different jurisdictions, and the
burdens of those collections would be stifling to the Internet."
GRAPHIC: See related stories, charts.
LOAD-DATE: August 31, 1999 
