Legislation that would force Internet retailers to collect sales taxes from
their customers has put antitax and small-government activists like Grover
Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and the Heritage Foundation in an unusual
position: they’re losing.
For years, conservative Republican lawmakers have been influenced heavily by
the antitax activists in Washington, who have dictated outcomes and become the
arbiters of what is and is not a tax increase.But on the question of Internet taxation, their voices have begun to be drowned out by the pleas of struggling retailers back home who complain that their online competitors enjoy an unfair price advantage.
