Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock is speaking out against issuing a sales tax for use of software located on remote computer servers.
Brock joins some other lawmakers speaking out against a Tax Department bulletin issued in 2010 saying the sales tax would be applied to pre-written software licensed for use from a remote server.
Brock says that a growing number of Vermont businesses use such servers for so-called "cloud computing." He says many of them are being hurt by the Tax Department’s push to collect sales taxes on the software they use.
Brock says the department has applied the tax retroactively to 2006 and has sent some businesses past-due tax bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.