E-commerce tax body may narrow focus

When its second public meeting starts Tuesday, the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce will consider a plan to narrow its focus to three specific Internet tax issues.

The commission, created last year by Congress after the passage of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, will hear testimony from a parade of business executives and public policy experts during its two-day meeting in New York. It faces a strict April 2000 deadline to complete a report to Congress on the impact of any future state and local taxes on e-commerce and any future taxes on telecommunications and cable services.

To ensure the deadline is met, commission member David Pottruck, CEO of Charles Schwab & Co., has proposed limiting its focus to three issues: The impact of taxes on telecommunications and cable Internet services, how e-commerce taxes (or lack thereof) might affect state and local governments, and whether foreign governments will push for e-commerce taxes.

"I think all of us have looked at the work we have ahead of us and recognize that, given the amount of time between now and (when) a report is produced, the amount of work is daunting," Pottruck said in a statement. "Therefore, we've tried to force upon ourselves the discipline of narrowing down the work into perhaps a little narrower focus than many of us would like."

Meanwhile, commission member Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, will propose a resolution recommending a ban on all Internet access taxes, online customs duties, and telephone excise taxes, commission officials said.

Also Tuesday, the Information Technology Association of America will release the results of a public opinion survey on Internet taxation Tuesday.

"We looked at which is more important to Americans, tax-free Internet sales or the ability of state and local governments to earn revenue" from those sales, ITAA spokeswoman Tinabeth Burton said.

The trade group will present its findings at the commission meeting mainly to encourage it to focus on what is in consumers' best interests as it completes its work, Burton said.

The survey includes opinions from 1,000 registered voters across the U.S. While Burton would not give details about its findings before its official release Tuesday, she did say the results were not "overwhelming" either in favor of or against e-commerce taxes.

The details
Set to testify on local and state telecommunications service tax issues on the meeting's opening day Tuesday are Annabelle Canning, vice president of the Committee on State Taxation, Jeffrey Eisenach, president of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, and Ed Shimizu, director of national regulatory relations at GTE.

The proposals by Pottruck and Norquist are also set for consideration Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday, a panel of state and local tax administrators will discuss the impact of online sales taxes.