Daniel Freedman of the New York Sun reports:

Tom Suozzi has a "Five-Point $5 Billion Taxpayer Savings Plan." Sounds good, right? But scroll down to Point V and you'll discover that "saving taxpayers' money" in Suozzi-land involves collecting "sales tax on items purchased on the Internet and remotely." Someone should let Mr. Suozzi know that taxing new things like Internet purchases doesn't save money for taxpayers.

It actually doesn't appear to be an original idea for Suozzi. The proposal was made in his speech to the Citizens Budget Commission, and looks to be more or less an endorsement of a finding by the CBC in this report, (PDF) which says:

The Commission considered broadening the base of the sales and corporate income taxes and concluded that more revenue could be raised from these taxes by taking steps that many other states have already taken to improve enforcement and close loopholes. The conclusions are:

· The State should embrace the national Streamlined Sales Tax Project to ensure that taxes on internet and remote sales can be collected in the future. When fully implemented, this initiative could yield from $40 million to $590 million per year in increased state sales tax collections.

A good chunk of that tax would be on non-New York residents buying stuff from New York-based businesses.

Not that this will give a pass to Suozzi from Internet commerce libertarians and online businesses in New York. But he's not out on a limb, alone.