An advertising tax would be harmful to South Dakota's economy. A tax on advertising would create inflationary hurdles and slow-downs for our state’s economy at a time when we can least afford it. Advertising drives sales. Businesses depend on advertising and marketing to promote their products and services. Imposing a new tax on South Dakota businesses would result in less promotion, less sales, and ultimately less sales tax revenues for state and local governments.
An ad tax would gut-punch our economy and be self-defeating.
South Dakota’s small businesses would suffer the most,
not Facebook and Google.​
An ad tax would create an unfair and unlevel playing field for Main Street and South Dakota’s small businesses. This would be a new tax on anyone who advertises -- Main Street businesses such as hardware stores, grocery stores, auto dealers, auctioneers, non-profits and much more. Assessing and collecting a sales tax for online, digital advertising flowing into our state from across the nation and around the globe would be inordinately burdensome and costly to administer. Online and social media advertisers may avoid this sales tax because of the complexity of how digital advertising works today.