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Even without a boycott movement, we may already have reached peak Amazon. This year, the Supreme Court may create a revolution in the ability of US states to t

Even without a boycott movement, we may already have reached peak Amazon. This year, the Supreme Court may create a revolution in the ability of US states to tax consumer purchases from online retailers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.#Supreme_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.#...). This could erode Amazon's online retail profitability enough to seriously slow its ever-increasing sales volume and give the competition enough breathing room to survive and even grow a bit. And Trump keeps complaining about the prices the USPS receives to deliver Amazon. Whether or not there's any merit in Trump's complaint, as a convenient piece of political theater, this cause could easily be picked up by the next president and renegotiated. It would be a crowd pleaser for someone like Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps the playing field will be tilted just enough to slow the whole Amazon machine.

ikeboy 9y ago
Amazon already charges tax on all 1p purchases, changes in that law wouldn't hurt them much.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  But what about all the small retailers that do business under the Amazon umbrella? Somehow, a lot of those little businesses still do not charge sales tax. A significant fraction of Amazon's sales are those little retailers.
dwyerm 9y ago
Or perhaps the playing field will be tilted even further in Amazon's favor. Collecting taxes is difficult. There are hundreds of thousands of variables depending on where you are currently standing and what you are buying. Consider, for instance, that you pay different sales taxes in different parts of Disney World. There's a space for a service that manages that burden for you. The service might already exist and is probably called 'Amazon Fulfillment'.
- portmanteaufu 9y ago
  > Consider, for instance, that you pay different sales taxes in different parts of Disney World. Whoa, what? This sounds interesting--do you have a link you could share?
  - dwyerm 9y ago
    "Most of the Walt Disney World Resort is in Orange County, Florida which has a tax rate of 6.5% while the most southern Resort hotels and venues are in Osceola County, Florida which has a 7.0% tax rate." [1] See also: [2] [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=taxes%20in%20disneyworld https://www.google.com/search?q=taxes%20in%20disneyworld [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_Distri...
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  There sure seem to be a lot of sales tax calculation service and software companies already, aside from Amazon: https://www.capterra.com/sales-tax-software/ https://www.capterra.com/sales-tax-software/ A lot of them are revealed by googling 'sales and use tax software' I think that sort of software solution has been around for about 20 years.
  - dwyerm 9y ago
    Oh, no doubt. I helped to support that software twenty years ago. It was expensive. It took constant grooming from an entire team of people. At the end of the month, the company had to cut hundreds of checks to authorities all over the country. For a Fortune 500 company, this is a normal cost of doing business. But this is not the kind of thing you want to subject small business owners to. We only had to go through this mess two decades ago because we had nexus sites at all our warehouses. Before Mayfair, the mom-and-pop internet seller could get by with only taxing their local customers. The Mayfair result is going to force difficult and expensive sales tax compliance onto the backs of small business. Your small business owner doesn't want to go shopping for 'sales and use tax software'. They want the shopping cart to do that work for them. Unless the states actually get together to come up with a simplified and unified system, companies like Amazon who can abstract all that away are are going to be a necessity. I think a nation-wide internet sales tax is better than forcing additional burden onto small business or driving them right into the arms of places like Amazon.

ikeboy 9y ago

Amazon already charges tax on all 1p purchases, changes in that law wouldn't hurt them much.

HillaryBriss 9y ago
But what about all the small retailers that do business under the Amazon umbrella? Somehow, a lot of those little businesses still do not charge sales tax. A significant fraction of Amazon's sales are those little retailers.

dwyerm 9y ago

Or perhaps the playing field will be tilted even further in Amazon's favor. Collecting taxes is difficult. There are hundreds of thousands of variables depending on where you are currently standing and what you are buying. Consider, for instance, that you pay different sales taxes in different parts of Disney World. There's a space for a service that manages that burden for you. The service might already exist and is probably called 'Amazon Fulfillment'.

portmanteaufu 9y ago
> Consider, for instance, that you pay different sales taxes in different parts of Disney World. Whoa, what? This sounds interesting--do you have a link you could share?
- dwyerm 9y ago
  "Most of the Walt Disney World Resort is in Orange County, Florida which has a tax rate of 6.5% while the most southern Resort hotels and venues are in Osceola County, Florida which has a 7.0% tax rate." [1] See also: [2] [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=taxes%20in%20disneyworld https://www.google.com/search?q=taxes%20in%20disneyworld [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_Distri...
HillaryBriss 9y ago
There sure seem to be a lot of sales tax calculation service and software companies already, aside from Amazon: https://www.capterra.com/sales-tax-software/ https://www.capterra.com/sales-tax-software/ A lot of them are revealed by googling 'sales and use tax software' I think that sort of software solution has been around for about 20 years.
- dwyerm 9y ago
  Oh, no doubt. I helped to support that software twenty years ago. It was expensive. It took constant grooming from an entire team of people. At the end of the month, the company had to cut hundreds of checks to authorities all over the country. For a Fortune 500 company, this is a normal cost of doing business. But this is not the kind of thing you want to subject small business owners to. We only had to go through this mess two decades ago because we had nexus sites at all our warehouses. Before Mayfair, the mom-and-pop internet seller could get by with only taxing their local customers. The Mayfair result is going to force difficult and expensive sales tax compliance onto the backs of small business. Your small business owner doesn't want to go shopping for 'sales and use tax software'. They want the shopping cart to do that work for them. Unless the states actually get together to come up with a simplified and unified system, companies like Amazon who can abstract all that away are are going to be a necessity. I think a nation-wide internet sales tax is better than forcing additional burden onto small business or driving them right into the arms of places like Amazon.