

Judge shields Amazon customer data from N. Carolina tax agency - cwan
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/10/judge-amazon-doesnt-have-to-turn.html

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btilly
Here is the underlying issue.

Settled law (settled in the 1800s with mail order catalogs) says the
following:

\- States may levy whatever taxes they want on their residents.

\- States may require companies within the state to collect those taxes for
them.

\- States do not have jurisdiction over interstate commerce, meaning that they
cannot impose requirements on companies in other states. Even if those
companies are doing business with customers in that state.

The result is that sales tax is owed for out of state purchases, but is rarely
collected. Amazon likes it that way, because it makes their goods cheaper.
State governments hate it, because their tax revenues are hit.

North Carolina tried the trick of getting Amazon's sales records. With that,
they can go to their private citizens and collect owed but unpaid taxes
directly. Amazon is fighting it because they want to remain an artificially
cheap alternative. The First Amendment issue was a red herring that they
managed to make a good legal argument from.

~~~
ars
How was North Carolina even was able to take Amazon to court? Don't they have
no jurisdiction at all?

~~~
btilly
From reading a couple of articles, it went the other way. North Carolina was
doing an audit to verify that Amazon was within state law. They asked for this
data as part of the audit. Then Amazon filed suit saying that they had no
right to make the request.

This makes sense to me. Anyone can make any request of anyone else for any
reason. You can't always get your request satisfied, but you're free to make
the request. And if the one making the request becomes too insistent
(governments are good at that), the final way you can make a "No" stick is to
go to court.

However the fact that this was argued on First Amendment grounds makes me
uncomfortable. What if North Carolina were to be asking about people who
ordered, say, electronic equipment? There is no free speech issue with knowing
whether you bought a microwave, so this precedent won't help block that
request.

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hyperbovine
"This case has been twisted into something it is not."

It's like they've never been to court before. Congratulations, you've been
outlawyered.

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moultano
Does anyone understand why we need both sales tax and income tax? That never
made any sense to me.

~~~
BrandonM
I think that a big part of it is that if we saw the 50%+ we actually pay in
taxes * all at once, we would realize how little value we're getting in
comparison to those "socialist" countries in Europe (and Canada) where they
don't pay much more but get much better services.

* When you factor in gas taxes, sin taxes, vehicle registrations, etc., as well as sales and income tax

~~~
moultano
Gas taxes, vehicle registration fees etc, actually make a lot of sense to me.
Ideally it would be great if we could fund our roads entirely with gas taxes
to internalize their cost.

~~~
vaksel
we could if we charged the same $4-6 bucks per gallon that it costs in pretty
much any other country

