4 ms·

The problem isn't that it can't compete on a level price playing field, but a level tax-reporting playing field. When you live in Sacramento, and go to San Fran

by fryguy 15y ago

The problem isn't that it can't compete on a level price playing field, but a level tax-reporting playing field. When you live in Sacramento, and go to San Francisco and buy a sandwich, you pay the local sales tax. A store has a physical presence in one location. It collects sales taxes for once district: namely, the one it's in. Presumably at least one person works at the physical location, and can total the receipts at the end of the month, and send a cheque and associated paperwork to the state and/or county and/or city. The problem is that California wants amazon to collect sales taxes from customers who live in California, even though they have no physical presence. This bill is saying that they do have a physical presence (i.e. someone that can send in the cheque and associated paperwork) because someone puts up a banner ad on their website and happen to live in California. It would be like Sacramento wanting the shop in San Francisco to collect additional Sacramento city sales tax because I'm from there. Keep in mind that I'm not a CPA, and these analogies probably suck.

scarmig 15y ago
In substance, that's a bad analogy. If you order something from WalMart.com, you have to pay sales tax for your jurisdiction, even though it's not a physical cashier in your jurisdiction ringing it up. It ends up giving Amazon an unfair advantage, just by virtue of the mere fact that it doesn't have physical retail locations in the states it sells stuff to.
- fryguy 15y ago
  That's not really true though. When you buy things on walmart.com, you can pick them up at the store. The same thing with the sears catalogue. In theory, because they are already submitting sales tax to the state, it's no additional burden to submit more sales tax for things coming from online sales. The reason it hasn't been the case for other things, is that it's an excessive burden of the mail-order retailers to figure out the amounts, and submit different forms for every state, even though they are only located in one.
  - pbreit 15y ago
    Neither of your comments make much sense. Amazon already collects tax in a lot of states so collecting in more would not be a major burden except financially. And what kind of advantage is slogging to the store to pick up a purchase?

by fryguy 15y ago

scarmig 15y ago

In substance, that's a bad analogy. If you order something from WalMart.com, you have to pay sales tax for your jurisdiction, even though it's not a physical cashier in your jurisdiction ringing it up. It ends up giving Amazon an unfair advantage, just by virtue of the mere fact that it doesn't have physical retail locations in the states it sells stuff to.

fryguy 15y ago
That's not really true though. When you buy things on walmart.com, you can pick them up at the store. The same thing with the sears catalogue. In theory, because they are already submitting sales tax to the state, it's no additional burden to submit more sales tax for things coming from online sales. The reason it hasn't been the case for other things, is that it's an excessive burden of the mail-order retailers to figure out the amounts, and submit different forms for every state, even though they are only located in one.
- pbreit 15y ago
  Neither of your comments make much sense. Amazon already collects tax in a lot of states so collecting in more would not be a major burden except financially. And what kind of advantage is slogging to the store to pick up a purchase?