GRA supports continuing Georgia's inclusion on the list of states (currently ten, including Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina) that have enacted temporary 'sales tax free' periods tied to back-to-school shopping. The Association believes that back-to-school 'sales tax holiday's' provide meaningful tax relief to Georgia families with school age children and stimulate retail sales, thereby benefiting businesses and their employees. Other business-related taxes resulting from the increased sales activity during the tax-free period significantly offset the relatively minor sales tax loss.

GRA recognizes that the free-flow of information is essential to healthy commerce in this state and will resist any attempt to prevent or unreasonably restrict a retailer's ability to collect and utilize basic personal information for their own marketing and customer service uses. A host of benefits accrue to consumers when businesses are allowed to use personal information collected from customers. Consumers have a right to be concerned about the protection of their privacy and customer relationships and retailers' reputations in one of our most competitive industries demand that personal data be used in a way that is sensitive to consumers' concerns about data privacy. The responsible use of customer information can occur while customer privacy is protected. Back to Top

GRA will resist efforts to unreasonably restrict the growth of retail operations and consumer choice for shopping. The increasing statewide and local efforts to control 'urban sprawl' have the potential to restrict retail competition by impacting the businesses ability to design and locate its operations to meet customer demand. GRA believes that retailing is the leading edge of competition and that all sizes, shapes, and types of retailers should be able to compete in the marketplace. Attempting to ban legitimate retailers through legislation or ordinance is contrary to our belief in free enterprise and therefore GRA is opposed to such efforts. Back to Top

The current sales tax system, featuring more than 7,500 tax jurisdictions nationwide, is too complicated to allow most e-commerce transactions to include sales tax collections. This places many traditional retailers that do collect sales tax at a competitive disadvantage. GRA will support and promote efforts in Georgia to simplify the current sales tax system so that it becomes viable for remote sellers, including pure Internet retailers without a physical presence in the state, to collect sales tax, thereby creating a 'level playing field' between traditional brick & mortar retailers and their Internet and catalog counterparts that do not currently collect sales tax. Back to Top