Professor Shanske Testifies Before Minnesota Senate Panel on Proposed Social Media Tax

The Minnesota Reformer quoted Professor Darien Shanske, who spoke before the Minnesota Senate Taxes Committee on April 8 about a Democratic proposal to implement a first-in-the-nation tax on social media companies that collect data on Minnesotans.

Republicans argued that social media companies like Facebook parent Meta would just pass on the cost of the taxes to Minnesota businesses that advertise on the site. And Democrats acknowledged that the bill likely would lead to litigation, if interpreted as a violation of the Internet Tax Freedom Act.

But Shanske told the committee that courts generally have ruled in states’ favor in disputes over revenue generators.

“It would be inappropriate for legislatures to give up on sound tax policy in the face of novel legal arguments that will ultimately be defeated,” Shanske said.

Darien Shanske is a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis. His academic interests include taxation, particularly state and local taxation, local government law, public finance, and political theory, particularly jurisprudence.