By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

Fayette County commissioners are tentatively in favor of taxing Internet business, so far.

Commissioner Herb Frady polled the group on the subject during last week's commission meeting. Frady is a member of the Taxation and Finance Committee of the National Association of Counties, and the committee dug into the controversial subject during the NACo annual convention this past weekend.

After returning from the conference Tuesday, Frady said the national lobbying organization is poised to push hard for Internet taxation.

Local and state governments are missing out on $20 billion a year in sales taxes that could be charged on Internet sales transactions, Frady said.

“I just feel it's unfair to our local businesses not to support this,” said Frady. “They're paying sales tax to us... why shouldn't the Internet businesses pay the same tax,” he said, adding that it will be at least two years before an Internet sales tax can be enacted, because President Clinton has issued an executive order effectively placing a moratorium on the idea.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott also has been a vocal opponent of the idea of taxing Internet sales, saying electronic commerce should be free of government regulation and taxation. Getting a program to the Senate floor for a vote will be a difficult task, Frady conceded.

One strategy that NACo hopes to employ, he said, is to draw up a detailed program so that Congress will have something to sink its teeth into.

“We're going to draw up a footprint of what we're going to do, how we're going to do it and have it ready by March for the next [NACo] meeting,” he said.

Questions like how the taxes will be disbursed to different states and counties and how it will be collected will be among those answered in advance, Frady said.

During last week's Fayette Commission meeting, Commissioners Linda Wells and Greg Dunn said they're not ready to say whether they support the idea or not. “This is going to be one of the biggest issues in the next few years,” said Dunn.

“I don't feel we have enough information to move forward,” added Wells.

“This is just saying we support the basic concept,” said Frady.

Commissioners Glen Gosa and Harold Bost said they support the basic concept.

Other count governments that are members of NACo apparently are strongly in favor of the idea, said Frady. The 75-member Taxation and Finance Committee appears unanimous, and there was a lot of support among the 5,000 NACo members in attendance as well, he said.

About half of the states in the U.S. have significant numbers of counties that are members of the advocacy group, he added.