The Scheme to Streamline Sales Tax Increases

Do we want a new national system for raising sales taxes, unconstrained by accountability to voters? If not, it’s time to start worrying.

While the [Streamlined Sales Tax Project] is promoted as a way to close an alleged Internet sales loophole that supposedly hurts bricks-and-mortar retailers, it’s really an effort to ... [pressure] Congress to set up a structure for taxing out-of-state sellers.

Before jumping onto the tax harmonization bandwagon—the increasingly popular mantra for big-government advocates in Europe, the UN, and the United States—the states and Congress should carefully examine what policies best promote national economic growth. More taxes, even those backed by elegant theoretical constructs, are seldom the answer.