Dec. 4--It seems that as welfare rolls drop on one hand, their likes rise on the other, suggesting that the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.
Take the case of West Virginia's Welfare to Work program, which rates as something of the model in the national climate of changing welfare, the saying goes, as we know it.
Now welfare rolls have few so-called tax-eaters and more taxpayers on one hand, but then it occurs on the other a rising horde of tax-takers.
That is if one is to believe a report by the state Tax Department on the rise in the loss of taxes on Internet sales. The holiday shopping season is boasting e-commerce sales, from all accounts, but not tax revenue.
By 2003, West Virginia will lose about $56.2 million in sales taxes through e-commerce, Mark Muchow, research director of the state Tax Department, told a legislative study committee earlier this year. But the loss right now is something less than $10 million.
Yet the projected loss for all states by 2003 amounts to about $10.8 billion. In my book, that speaks loads for tax-takers. It's shades of what some call business socialism or business welfare.
Truth to tell, it's a tax take for the consumer as well as business. Some West Virginia vendors collect the tax on Internet sales, but others don't, and that matters.
It raises the old question about tax collection on mail-order sales. Presently, the state is losing about $20 million in tax revenue on these sales, researchers say.
Nonetheless, the writing is on the wall for all to see that tax loss to mail-order business will pale by comparison to loss from the Internet in the immediate years ahead. Such is the mixed blessing of the Internet in this age of commercial wonders.
Even so, if Internet sales don't pay taxes, then the difference must be made up from other sources to pay for public services. On top of that, taxless Internet sales throw a monkey wrench in the marketplace, patently unfair to other payers of the sales tax.
I'm told that the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act doesn't prohibit states from collecting sales tax, not by any stretch of the imagination. The law was made to protect and encourage the growth of e-commerce, but not to harbor tax-takers.
Nor does the law excuse West Virginia vendors or others from legal responsibility to collect and remit Internet sales taxes due on consumer and business purchases as well.
Researchers say it appears that Virginia stands to lose the least amount of tax money from Internet sales, and Texas and Tennessee, the most.
In West Virginia, total consumer sales tax collections have risen to $851.8 million from $621 million in fiscal 1992 through 1999, states records show. During the same period, personal income tax collections grew about 54 percent, to $919.8 million from 598.6 million.
I think few, if any, taxpayers want their taxes increased to make up for uncollected Internet sales taxes, neither on one hand nor on the other from the same pocket.
--Peeks is a former Gazette business/labor editor.
To see more of The Charleston Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.wvgazette.com (c) 2000, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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