What’s at stake
Most business owners framed the argument in the familiar “buy local” terms. Shopping on Main Street is important, they say, because it grows the local tax-base and keeps the community vital.
“What this conversation really should be about, beyond how we get taxed, is, what do we want our communities to look like?” said Jessica DuPont, owner of Half Moon Books in Kingston. “Are we citizens, or are we consumers? Do we want to be a country that just mails things to each other in boxes from warehouses, or do we want some kind of meaningful contact with each other?”
Rice said local stores have other advantages online stores could never replace. “People come into the store for the experience of being here, and for a place to hang out,” she says. “They come for the personalized “face-to-face” customer service that you can’t get online.”
Jacqueline Kellachan has owned the Golden Notebook in Woodstock for about a year now. The store has been a fixture in the community since 1978. “I really believe in the role independent bookstores play in the community,” she says. “Something may seem cheaper online without the tax, but our local business supports our local community. Amazon doesn’t host authors, or raise money for community groups like we do.”
Kellachan competes with online vendors by maintaining a website for the store, offering customers the opportunity to order online but get free shipping if they pick up their purchase at the store. She observes that the law at present “is only the way it is because at the time the laws were written, things were different.”
According to Henry, the last time the sales tax collection issue was challenged at the federal level was 1992, before Amazon and Ebay existed. Henry says that changes in the laws are necessary, because Internet sales are growing four times faster than sales at brick-and-mortar stores, and Internet retail is a $43-billion business, and growing exponentially.
