

Amazon joins Walmart in push for online sales tax - hadronzoo
http://washingtonexaminer.com/carney-amazon-joins-walmart-in-push-for-online-sales-tax/article/2503738

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Surio
The crux of the article is this:

Amazon joins Walmart in push for online sales tax _not out of some newfound
concern for "marketplace fairness," but because Amazon's business model is
changing in such a way that now Amazon stands to benefit from this tax.

In order to provide faster shipping, Amazon is building warehouses throughout
the country. These warehouses constitute a "physical presence," which requires
them to collect sales taxes, in any event. So, if Amazon is going to have to
collect sales taxes under the existing "physical presence" doctrine, it may as
well try to expand online sales taxes to whack its smaller competitors who
don't have a 50-state network of giant warehouses._

Sigh!

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Rudism
I'm not sure if I'd be unhappy about paying sales tax on Amazon purchases if
it meant free same-day shipping as a Prime member (or free next-day shipping
for non-Prime), which is what I recall they're looking at switching to once
their network of warehouses is ready.

~~~
unabridged
I just want Amazon Fresh, then I never have to leave the house.

~~~
maaku
That's more or less what they're working towards. Although Safeway.com can
already deliver that.

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malandrew
Yeah, but the online interface and experience is atrocious. Tried it a few
times and it simply doesn't compare to going to the store.

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nathanb
Takeaway: you will already be paying sales tax on your Amazon purchases in the
future, and Amazon want to force other retailers to do the same in order to
keep the playing field level.

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georgemcbay
I'm not so sure this is a playing field leveling as much as it is someone who
grew massively from eating a certain fruit scorching the field the fruit grows
on after he's grown into a giant.

(I say this as a fan of Amazon -- I use them all the time and will continue to
do so, but this is a purely shrewd corporate move and shouldn't be confused
with making things fair).

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jessaustin
So much for Amazon's risible old saw that "sales taxes vary so much among
jurisdictions that calculating taxes would be an onerous burden for us". There
is some business size at which that is true, but Amazon has never been that
small. Lots of folks use Vertex:
<http://www.vertexinc.com/solutions/indirect/sales-tax.asp>

Since Amazon has been growing its SaaS business for some time now one had to
expect they were eventually going to want to make operating shopping cart
checkout by yourself as tricky as possible. They might start lobbying
municipalities to pile on the complications now that they're on the "right"
side of this dispute.

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Hawkee
I'm surprised this article made no mention of the affiliate nexus laws that
have been passed over the past few years. The law was first passed in New York
requiring Amazon to collect sales tax from NY customers. NY claimed Amazon's
NY "associates", affiliates earning commissions for sending customers to
Amazon, represented a physical nexus. Amazon agreed to collect the tax in this
case, but it opted not to collect tax in other states who enacted a similar
law. Instead Amazon effectively "fired" all of the affiliates living in those
states. In one case Fat Wallet, a major player in the online affiliate
industry, moved their company out of Illinois because they lost many of their
affiliate partners. Illinois didn't gain anything and lost a source of income
tax. This has been a major issue in the affiliate industry as it cuts off huge
sources of revenue for affected affiliates. Amazon is pushing for the federal
government to step in partly because they don't want to lose their online
marketers. Secondly, they don't want to maintain a database of tens of
thousands of tax jurisdictions across the country.

~~~
jessaustin
_maintain a database of tens of thousands of tax jurisdictions across the
country._

This was always a red herring. Vertex (and presumably others, although I've
only worked with Vertex) already maintains this database, and will help any
company calculate taxes for a reasonable fee. Corporations with far lower
revenues than Amazon have been taxing in many jurisdictions for decades.

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tomjen3
The lobbyists are going to be the death of the United States.

I can't blame Amazon though, just looking out for themselves which is the same
as the rest of us do.

~~~
shpxnvz
> The lobbyists are going to be the death of the United States.

I can't blame the lobbyists either, they're just looking out for themselves
the same as the rest of us do.

I can blame the legislators. They're the ones with a monopoly on force wielded
against us for their own gain.

~~~
ataggart
I can't blame the legislators either, they're just looking out for themselves
the same as the rest of us do.

I can blame the electorate. They're the ones granting the power and the
legitimacy to the force wielded against us.

~~~
jessaustin
I can't blame the electorate either; they're just looking out for themselves
the same as the rest of us do, because they are in fact the rest of us. There
is no candidate now alive who will not rapidly succumb to the temptations of
the lobbyists if given the opportunity. The problem can't be solved by voting
for "good" people.

I don't know _who_ the hell to blame. It's the system man!

~~~
abawany
I can't blame the system either - it exists because of those darned
corporations, lobbyists, politicians, and the electorate.

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IgorPartola
Having just filed my taxes, and gone through the "so how much tax free stuff
did you buy online?" rigmarole this would actually make my life easier. The
article calls all but eBay and Overstock.com "Mom and Pop" shops. A real local
store that happens to sell stuff online will actually benefit from this law.
States will benefit, since this law will actually level things. The only
places that will suffer are Amazon's smaller competitors, which otherwise
would just turn around and try to crush the local brick and mortar small
shops.

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jackmoore
Just noting that this article is from last August.

~~~
hadronzoo
Note that the Marketplace Fairness Act has been reintroduced in the Senate:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/13/us-usa-tax-
online-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/13/us-usa-tax-online-sales-
idUSBRE91C1IC20130213)

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speeder
Yay for using government to blast competition to little bits!

~~~
jdechko
Not that this is anything new. The government has granted a duopoly in almost
all markets for cable/ internet services, and local governments are being sued
for attempting to bring in their own networks.

As much as it sucks, money is power.

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jivatmanx
Bad from an environmental perspective: Mail delivery uses a fraction of the
carbon of driving to the store.

~~~
streptomycin
Even if that's true, solving an environmental problem by applying different
sales tax depending on how you buy something is wacky and undoubtedly fraught
with inaccuracies and unintended consequences. A much better and more direct
solution for the externality of carbon emissions is a carbon tax.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Because carbon taxes have no weird, unintended consequences.

~~~
jessaustin
Just because you don't like the consequences doesn't mean the carbon tax
supporters don't intend them.

At least carbon taxes are better than cap'n'trade. That scheme is corruption
on wheels. I actually wouldn't mind carbon taxes if I could believe that they
would completely forestall cap'n'trade.

~~~
ShawnBird
What is wrong with cap and trade? I don't have a strong understanding of the
proposed law but it stands to reason that the free market would be able to
find the most efficient method of reducing emissions.

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jlarocco
Whatever you think about cap and trade, it's not a free market thing.

By definition a "free market" is free of government interference. A system
created by and run by the government, with mandatory participation is about as
anti-free market as it gets.

If a company can't opt-out of participation then it's not a free market.

~~~
ShawnBird
For some reason I thought it was a plan treat carbon emissions as something
that could be traded. So if I have a factory and lowering my carbon emissions
would cost me $5000 per ton/day and you had a different type of factory that
could lower it's emissions for $1000 per ton/day I could sell you my emissions
for a negotiated price (in this example, let's say we settled on $1400 per
ton/day) and you can lower your emissions and I can keep chugging along. The
same amount of carbon is in the atmosphere but it only cost $1400 per ton/day
and you got to pocket some money to make your factory run cleaner.

I understand now that it is much more complicated than that but I like the
idea of what I thought it was.

