6 ms·

Judge shields Amazon customer data from N. Carolina tax agency

34 points by cwan 16y ago

hyperbovine 16y ago
"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.
moultano 16y ago
Does anyone understand why we need both sales tax and income tax? That never made any sense to me.
- btilly 16y ago
  Many (most?) states don't have both. They only have one or the other. At least one state (New Hampshire) has neither. Instead they have little government, high license fees, and the state runs the liquor stores at a profit. (Said stores sell liquor much cheaper than surrounding states. NH takes advantage of this by putting big stores right on the Interstate as close to Boston as they can.)
  - jonknee 16y ago
    Hardly. States without income tax: Alaska, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Florida, South Dakota, Washington, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming. States without sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon So just two states--Alaska and New Hampshire--have neither, while most have both. By population it's even more apparent as AK/NH/SD/WY/DE/MT have almost no population (about 5 million combined or less than the size of metro Houston).
    - btilly 16y ago
      I stand corrected.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    New Hampshire also has very high property taxes. You can't balance a budget on liquor store proceeds. (Alaska has the oil thing). 5.3% income tax (MA) vs 5-6k higher property tax bill means, unless you're making over 100k (much less common in NH than SF or NYC), then NH is a higher-tax place to live. This is in contradiction to what 80% of people who live in the area will tell you, but they're all wrong, these are the numbers.
    - btilly 16y ago
      When I lived in NH most of the property tax bill went to the local government for things like schools, and not the state. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy Overall, New Hampshire remains ranked 49th among states in combined average state and local tax burden. This suggests that the locals actually are correct.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        When you lived in NH, the state was redistributing some of that property tax to poorer municipalities due to a NH state supreme court case that happened around 10-20 years ago. And, like I said, if you weren't making a lot of money you were probably getting a bum rap compared to income tax as far as how much you had to pay relative to the total tax take. Property taxes are regressive unless you have a sweetheart landlord. I was talking about southern NH where the property values are high and everything else is comparable to Massachusetts - between northern MA and southern NH you're talking a 5-6k real estate tax bump for the average home. In the boonies you pay less property tax because your town is getting it from Nashua. They do have a lightweight state gov't, but it still costs money to run the various services in every town. If you want to live somewhere very isolated and not pay for services you're not getting, though, northern NH is your place. EDIT: Ugh! Clicked through to wikipedia. What's the cite? "The Tax Foundation". It doesn't even mention property taxes, just state taxes, and no indication as to how they produced the number. Their PDF is 1 page. Think tanks are fun! http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html
- BrandonM 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      we could if we charged the same $4-6 bucks per gallon that it costs in pretty much any other country
  - btilly 16y ago
    From what I've read the biggest reason for Canada's higher tax rate is that they run a balanced budget. If the USA were to balance its budget by raising taxes, it would also suddenly have a much higher tax rate.
    - anamax 16y ago
      Actually, US govt spending per person was comparable to Canada's. (US govt spending is growing.) US govt tax collection as a fraction of GDP doesn't bounce around all that much, independent of rates.
      - btilly 16y ago
        That is another way of saying the same thing. The two countries spend about the same. Canada is actually balancing its budget. Therefore Canada needs to be collecting more in taxes.
  - deleted 16y ago
- mmt 16y ago
  It's worse than that.. there's all three of sales/use, income, and property.
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    welcome to the hotel California.
btilly 16y ago
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.
- shpxnvz 16y ago
  A minor nit - it's not a sales tax that is due on out of state purchases, but rather a use tax (though it's commonly the same rate as the local sales tax). The issue isn't so much that it's rarely collected, but that purchasers who have a legal responsibility to declare and pay it rarely do because there is (as you stated) no practical way for the state to track such purchases, excepting some obvious exceptions like out-of-state purchased vehicles - many states collect the use tax before they allow the vehicle to be registered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax
- ars 16y ago
  How was North Carolina even was able to take Amazon to court? Don't they have no jurisdiction at all?
  - btilly 16y ago
    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.

34 points by cwan 16y ago

"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.

moultano 16y ago

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

btilly 16y ago
Many (most?) states don't have both. They only have one or the other. At least one state (New Hampshire) has neither. Instead they have little government, high license fees, and the state runs the liquor stores at a profit. (Said stores sell liquor much cheaper than surrounding states. NH takes advantage of this by putting big stores right on the Interstate as close to Boston as they can.)
- jonknee 16y ago
  Hardly. States without income tax: Alaska, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Florida, South Dakota, Washington, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming. States without sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon So just two states--Alaska and New Hampshire--have neither, while most have both. By population it's even more apparent as AK/NH/SD/WY/DE/MT have almost no population (about 5 million combined or less than the size of metro Houston).
  - btilly 16y ago
    I stand corrected.
- jbooth 16y ago
  New Hampshire also has very high property taxes. You can't balance a budget on liquor store proceeds. (Alaska has the oil thing). 5.3% income tax (MA) vs 5-6k higher property tax bill means, unless you're making over 100k (much less common in NH than SF or NYC), then NH is a higher-tax place to live. This is in contradiction to what 80% of people who live in the area will tell you, but they're all wrong, these are the numbers.
  - btilly 16y ago
    When I lived in NH most of the property tax bill went to the local government for things like schools, and not the state. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy Overall, New Hampshire remains ranked 49th among states in combined average state and local tax burden. This suggests that the locals actually are correct.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      When you lived in NH, the state was redistributing some of that property tax to poorer municipalities due to a NH state supreme court case that happened around 10-20 years ago. And, like I said, if you weren't making a lot of money you were probably getting a bum rap compared to income tax as far as how much you had to pay relative to the total tax take. Property taxes are regressive unless you have a sweetheart landlord. I was talking about southern NH where the property values are high and everything else is comparable to Massachusetts - between northern MA and southern NH you're talking a 5-6k real estate tax bump for the average home. In the boonies you pay less property tax because your town is getting it from Nashua. They do have a lightweight state gov't, but it still costs money to run the various services in every town. If you want to live somewhere very isolated and not pay for services you're not getting, though, northern NH is your place. EDIT: Ugh! Clicked through to wikipedia. What's the cite? "The Tax Foundation". It doesn't even mention property taxes, just state taxes, and no indication as to how they produced the number. Their PDF is 1 page. Think tanks are fun! http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html
BrandonM 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    we could if we charged the same $4-6 bucks per gallon that it costs in pretty much any other country
- btilly 16y ago
  From what I've read the biggest reason for Canada's higher tax rate is that they run a balanced budget. If the USA were to balance its budget by raising taxes, it would also suddenly have a much higher tax rate.
  - anamax 16y ago
    Actually, US govt spending per person was comparable to Canada's. (US govt spending is growing.) US govt tax collection as a fraction of GDP doesn't bounce around all that much, independent of rates.
    - btilly 16y ago
      That is another way of saying the same thing. The two countries spend about the same. Canada is actually balancing its budget. Therefore Canada needs to be collecting more in taxes.
- deleted 16y ago
mmt 16y ago
It's worse than that.. there's all three of sales/use, income, and property.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  welcome to the hotel California.

btilly 16y ago

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.

shpxnvz 16y ago
A minor nit - it's not a sales tax that is due on out of state purchases, but rather a use tax (though it's commonly the same rate as the local sales tax). The issue isn't so much that it's rarely collected, but that purchasers who have a legal responsibility to declare and pay it rarely do because there is (as you stated) no practical way for the state to track such purchases, excepting some obvious exceptions like out-of-state purchased vehicles - many states collect the use tax before they allow the vehicle to be registered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax
ars 16y ago
How was North Carolina even was able to take Amazon to court? Don't they have no jurisdiction at all?
- btilly 16y ago
  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.