
Amazon's Tax Dodge - jsherry
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/opinion/amazoncoms-tax-dodge.html
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teilo
To call this a "tax dodge" is libel. Amazon does not owe the taxes. The
citizens of California do. How can Amazon be accused of dodging taxes that it
is not liable to pay.

Once again the New York Times places the blame on business, when the blame
belongs on the consumer, and on the government that has made the state of
California hostile to doing business within its borders.

If the law is re-interpreted to mean that the _ability_ of another state's
citizens to purchase from your business in the privacy of their homes,
constitutes an obligation of said business to collect taxes on behalf of the
consumer's state, then all such transactions must be equal, regardless of the
distribution channel. Business conducted by catalog or by phone should also
impose such a burden on a retailer.

Consider where this would have to go: every retailer would have, of necessity,
to collect taxes for 50+ tax authorities, as state-after-state makes the same
demand on the retailer. While large businesses (admittedly, Amazon being one
of them) have the infrastructure in place to do this, most small businesses do
not. Their costs will inevitably increase, as they attempt to comply with the
burden of collecting for and reporting to all the various regional tax
authorities.

How many brick-and-mortar shops survive today based upon their online
business? Shall said businesses be required, by the government to _turn away_
out-of-state customers because they are not equipped to collect taxes for
their customers' states of residence?

------
jacques_chester
"Every man is entitled if he can to arrange his affairs so that the tax
attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be. If he
succeeds in ordering them so as to secure that result, then, however
unappreciative the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may
be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax."

------
smoyer
"... These cash-strapped governments ..."

Because we all know the governments are very thrifty and efficient when
spending taxpayers money? Somehow I can't bring myself to feel any pity for
these poor governments.

