JACKSON - As folks of my generation and those even older and more decrepit have learned, one can shop online 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, alone in the dark in your underwear from the privacy of your home. Disgusting, yes, but true.
While there is a certain attraction to not having to search for a parking place, fight mall crowds and generally fight the Christmas crush, part of the major attraction of online shopping is that it caters to something that is worshiped in our society - time.
There's another attraction to online shopping in Mississippi. In most cases, you can save 7 percent on each purchase because Congress has in its infinite wisdom failed to make sales taxes apply to most out-of-state Internet purchases.
The state Legislature hasn't done much toward trying to capture Internet sales taxes, either.
That's great for the guy sitting home in his underwear at midnight shopping for Christmas gifts. But that's lousy for the thousands of mom-and-pop businesses in hundreds of Mississippi communities who operate businesses that provide jobs for Mississippians and who are required by law to collect the state's 7 percent sales tax on most every item they sell.
Beyond creating an uneven playing field for Mississippi businesses, the state's refusal to tax Internet sales is a choice to forgo $136.5 million in annual sales taxes at a time when the state is experiencing a budget crisis estimated between $450 million and $750 million.
By fiscal year 2006, University of Tennessee researchers Donald Bruce and William Fox estimate Mississippi's Internet sales tax losses will grow to $462 million. Bruce and Fox estimate Mississippi has already lost $624 million in taxes sales on the Internet.
As Internet shopping increases - and it will - the state's losses on uncollected sales taxes will mount.
Foregone sales tax collections mean that while Mississippi taxpayers might save a few bucks individually in the short term, they'll pay through the nose in the long run through hikes in other, more ominous taxes like property taxes or income taxes.
Not only do foregone Internet sales taxes propel legislators toward state tax increases, but since 18 percent of state sales taxes are returned to local governments, foregone tax collections create funding voids that propel local governments toward higher property taxes.
At Christmas each year, I send a few friends some special fruit from a company based in Oregon. I order it online.
For the gifts shipped to friends and kin in Mississippi, no sales taxes are collected on the order. But on the portions of the order that ship to kin in New York and Virginia, the company collects sales taxes levied by those states.
The Oregon company collects 4 percent on taxes for shipments to Alabama, 6 percent on shipments to Florida, 5 percent on shipments to Georgia, 5 percent on shipments to South Carolina and 8.5 percent on shipments to Tennessee, but nothing on shipments to Mississippi.
But if I go up the street from my home and buy fruit from my grocer - who provides jobs, sponsors Little League ball teams, volunteers in the schools, helps out the Chamber of Commerce and generally is a good corporate citizen - he's required by law to charge me Mississippi's 7 percent tax.
That's not fair to him or his employees who depend upon him.
It's time for Mississippi to level the sales tax playing field for Mississippi merchants - and collect the taxes already on the books before raising new taxes.
Why should Mississippi businesses have to compete at an unnecessary disadvantage?
