The Alliance for Main Street Fairness (AMSF) launched a television advertising campaign to educate lawmakers on what it calls “the imminent threat posed by China’s online mega-retailer—Alibaba—as it enters the U.S. retail market.” Retailers are imploring the U.S. House of Representatives to join the U.S. Senate by passing e-fairness legislation that closes the online sales tax loophole this year.
AMSF says Alibaba’s emergence in the U.S. retail market will allow it to exploit the online sales tax loophole that has given online retailers an artificial advantage over American brick-and-mortar businesses.
“This loophole was bad enough as local retailers have competed on an uneven playing field with the likes of Amazon.com, Overstock.com and eBay.com,” AMSF wrote in a press release. “But the emergence of Alibaba—a company that does more transactions a day than Amazon.com and eBay.com combined—could be a death sentence for thousands of brick-and-mortar businesses.”
AMSF says “local retailers are urgently asking Congress to act before Alibaba gains a foothold in the American market and begins undercutting local Main Street retailers by not collecting the same sales tax they have to collect.”
However, an Alibaba Group spokeswoman said in an email sent to Multichannel Merchant that Alibaba Group pays its taxes according to the laws in the country it does business, and the U.S. is no exception.
“The Alibaba Group remains focused on providing U.S.-based companies the opportunity to bring their products and services to the Chinese market through our various online properties,” Alibaba group said in an email.
The U.S. Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act in 2013, which would require all remote sellers to collect and remit sales tax just like their brick and mortar counterparts. However, Congress did not take any action.
Joshua Baca, spokesperson for the Alliance for Main Street Fairness, said in a statement that “There will be fewer small businesses to choose from next year if Congress continues to delay and gives companies like Alibaba a special tax advantage over local retailers.”
AMSF is a coalition of business owners and concerned citizens who want to bring sales tax laws up-to-date and level the playing field so all businesses can compete fairly.