Online sales tax and government greed

As expected, talk of instituting sales tax for online purchases is in the air again and it’s sad to see just how many politicians are foaming at the mouth like rabid dogs to get their hands on your money.
The biggest argument I’ve seen in favor of the collection of sales tax for online purchases is that online businesses have an unfair advantage in the marketplace, since brick and mortar retail stores are required to collect taxes in the areas in which they are located. However, it’s fairly obvious to anyone that sales tax is not the determining factor in where people shop. Online stores are so popular because of convenience, not sales tax. Amazon is not the largest online retailer because they charge no sales tax, they are the largest online retailer because they have spent a lot of money creating an infrastructure to get packages to people faster and faster, making their store more and more convenient.
Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone else that since the state and federal government decided to turn private businesses into their tax collection mules that they would not want to help those businesses, but hurt others in their attempt to level the playing field. If one horse in the race has a broken leg, you don’t break all the other horses’ legs to make things even. You try to heal that horse so that he may better compete. Instead of looking for ways to ease the burden the government itself placed on businesses with brick and mortar stores, they are looking for the easy (and far more lucrative for them) way out. And that is, simply put, to dig their grubby little hands further into the taxpayers’ pockets.
Technically, there already is a law in place which requires Louisiana residents who make online purchases to tally up those purchases at the end of the year and pay the sales taxes on those items. However, the state basically has no way to enforce this law since that would require keeping track of and invading the privacy of the residents of this state. It’s funny how government, both state and federal, loves to create laws it has no way of enforcing. That’s your tax money hard at work.
Just imagine, if you will, as a small business owner, how big of a pain it is to keep track of sales taxes and to remit them properly. Now imagine that on a nationwide scale. Imagine having to monitor thousands upon thousands of taxing districts and all the changes being made within those taxing districts. Are you receiving any sort of compensation for doing all this work for the government? No? Do you think that’s fair? Why don’t they attempt to help you instead of look to hinder someone else?
Many politicians like to use language that makes it sound as though this money will be coming from outside sources, such as “This is money Louisiana is missing out on.” Oddly enough, they don’t seem to realize, or they are trying to hide, the fact that this money will not be coming from outside sources. It will be coming from you and me, the already overtaxed citizens of Louisiana. Excuse me if I’m out of line, but the amount of money the state has in its coffers has never once affected my life. What does affect my life is how much money I have in my own pockets, which is becoming less and less as politicians spend more and more recklessly, wasting untold billions and even trillions of dollars (at the national level) on shady deals and just plain irresponsible spending. Why should we, the burdened taxpayers of the country, have to continue to shoulder the load for politicians horrible spending habits? Why should we be the ones who suffer when the state looks to take out money?
I think if the state and federal government worked on actually easing the burden on traditional brick and mortar businesses, and also easing the burden on taxpayers, perhaps a nice middle ground will be found. But, as we all know, politicians are almost always about taking, not giving.