Congress to push Internet sales tax after midterm elections

Lawmakers have set up a lame-duck showdown over a long-stalled issue: whether to give states more authority to tax Internet sales. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) put the online sales tax legislation at the top of his priority list, when he shared his post-November to-do list before leaving Washington to campaign. “That is long, long overdue,” Sen Reid said of the online sales tax bill, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA). He said he’d do “whatever it takes to get that done.”

Lawmakers extended the moratorium on Internet access taxes, which was scheduled to expire on Nov. 1, until mid-December in the stopgap spending measure. The short-term spending bill expires on Dec. 11, giving supporters a chance to pair the Marketplace Fairness Act with a longer extension of the online tax moratorium. The lame-duck session is poised to be crucial for both sides. If the online sales tax bill doesn’t become law in 2014, supporters will have to restart the legislative process in 2015 — after watching the Senate pass a version of the Marketplace Fairness Act in the first part of 2013.