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Every time you buy something online, you pay tax. You will never see it.
It doesn’t appear on your receipt. No politician voted for it. But it is included in the price of everything you buy, and flows straight into the pockets of the most powerful companies in the world.
That is the racket that Amazon has made. The Senate finally had a chance to break it by passing the bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA).
When Amazon first opened its marketplace, it took about 19 cents for every dollar an independent seller earned. Today it takes about half. Listing fees. Advertising fees. Filing fees. Penalties for sellers who dare to offer a better price elsewhere. A small business owner in Ohio or Arizona forks over 45 to 50 cents on the dollar just for the privilege of reaching existing Amazon customers.
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Retailers cannot absorb those costs. So they raise the prices. And Amazon penalizes any seller who charges less than another website. List your cheap product in your store, and Amazon will bury you in their search results. So prices are going up everywhere, on every site, whether you’re buying from Amazon or not. This tollbooth taxes the entire internet. Groceries, gadgets, everyday staples for every family budget all have the same invisible markup.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is seen at the US Capitol during votes related to the government shutdown on Thursday, October 16, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
It gets worse. Amazon’s marketplace is full of sellers who ship cheap goods from China, avoiding safety regulations, tariffs, and taxes that American businesses can’t escape. The family store on Main Street follows all the rules and still loses shelf space due to illegal overseas operations. Amazon’s search results tend to push buyers to those listings, because cheap goods go quickly and costs come in regardless of who is listing the sale. Amazon makes a profit either way. American families don’t.
Conservatives know this company from the other side, too. This is the same Amazon that pulled books from its virtual shelves when the content offended the leftist sensibilities of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Pull a title here, push a dealer there–all at whatever level the elite established that week. A company that has so much control over what Americans can buy, read, and sell is not a neutral market. It is a gatekeeper with an agenda.
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This week, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa reintroduced AICOA. The concept is simple enough for a fifth grader to figure out. If you own a market, you shouldn’t have to do it yourself. AICOA stops Big Tech’s best platforms from burying competitors, powerful vendors with money no one wants, and using their size to crush everyone below them. Competitive returns. Prices are falling. The little guy gets the right shot.
AICOA is one piece of the puzzle. Two other bills are sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and they are concurrent.
Amazon receives a large portion of all online purchases, according to Mike Davis. (Getty Images)
The Open App Markets Act takes Apple and Google, pocketing 30 percent of every app, subscription, and purchase Americans make on their phones. Imagine a landlord who uses a third of all merchandise in every store he owns, then forbids you to shop anywhere else. That’s the app economy under Big Tech right now.
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The AMERICA Act addresses Google’s involvement in digital advertising. Google runs the auction, manages the exchange, and represents the buyer and seller at the same time. Small businesses pay more to advertise, and you pay more for everything they sell. Eliminate that conflict of interest and put money back in Main Street’s pocket.
Three bills. One goal. Stop the gatekeepers from taxing the entire economy.
AICOA has cleared the Judiciary Committee once on a lopsided bipartisan vote. More than 100 groups supported it, free market conservatives and consumer advocates alike. Accessibility is a rare issue that unites an angry world.
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Lobbyists will be overwhelmed. They always do. They will warn that bringing back these companies is giving China a gift, killing innovation, and breaking the Internet you love. Save it. We’ve heard this script before. Every monopoly in American history swore that competition would destroy everything, until competition proved them wrong.
Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times)
The Big Tech oligarchs are trying to do the same because they have built their fortunes by crushing the competition, then dressing up the failure as progress. A truly competitive market creates circles around an unaccountable monopoly. China wins when America protects its monopolies. America wins when it lets its entrepreneurs go.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee must advance all three bills. There is no delay. No watering them. The American people are sick of paying taxes to corporations that don’t answer to the voter and don’t use the king but their own bottom line.
Cut the tollbooth. Open markets. Let the Americans compete again.
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