Amazon Folds In California Sales Tax Deal 639
theodp writes "In a deal indicating all sides appear ready to call a truce, the San Jose Mercury News reports that Amazon.com is offering to back down from its referendum drive to repeal an online sales tax in exchange for a one-year moratorium on collecting the tax. Under the deal, Amazon would agree to begin collecting the tax from California residents in September 2012, unless Congress takes action on Internet sales taxes before then. The development comes a day after a NY Times editorial ripped Amazon over its sales 'tax dodge.'"
[sigh] (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:[sigh] (Score:0, Insightful)
Please do not let the door hit your butt. Enjoy your Randian paradise: Texas.
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sales tax is the most regressive form of taxation in the United States. If sales tax is 30%, that means the poorest of the poor are paying an effective tax rate of 30%, because they need to spend every penny they make in order to survive. Meanwhile, if you look at someone who makes $30 million a year, spends $2 million on taxable goods, and invests or saves the other $28 million, they end up paying an effective 2% tax rate.
It's obviously not "fair" to tax each person the same dollar amount. Why do people think it's "fair" to tax each person the same percentage? I'd call it most fair to impose the same financial burden on each person through taxes, which means that we're able to take a much, much larger percentage of a very rich person's income before they're seriously inconvenienced by it.
Re:Amzon isnt dodging anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:[sigh] (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should Amazon be able to avoid paying taxes while any other business in the state does?
I'm sick of corporate America being treated like royalty. They have more voting power, more funds, lower taxes, and seemingly unlimited resources to control the political landscape to the detriment of the consumer. When they start hiring and stop giving all their money to their CEO's, perhaps I might have more sympathy, but until I see they are actually interested in supporting the states and municipals where they do business, then I can't seem to shed a tear for them.
Why is Borders better than Amazon or alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)
All this occurred because customers flock to Amazon like buzzards to a carcass so they can buy merchandise without having to pay tax (outside of WA).
I don't buy books from Amazon because I avoid taxes, I buy from them for the convince of wanting something and having it two days later without having to waste an hour to go get it. I like local bookstores for when I don't know what I want, and just want to browse... Borders did not deliver well on either use case.
Thus is Borders dilemma - why would I support them over Amazon? You get none of the happy feeling of supporting a small local bookstore. Yet you get none of the vastly larger selection that Amazon has. Borders were huge, but what was really in there? I always found a better selection either at a small local bookstore or as I said Amazon, and that was what really killed them.. there is no room in the middle for something inherently specialized where small local businesses can do a better job addressing regional tastes in books than a large chain.
Re:Actual link to the article (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the fact that there is a supreme court ruling from the Sears days which is in Amazon's favor, I'm really surprised by this.
The ruling "from the Sears days" is that if you aren't physically in the state, you aren't required to collect sales tax in the state.
Amazon's shipping company is in the state. They probably had a 50-50 shot at snowing over gullible juries and/or convincing courts that their shipping/warehousing/fulfillment company, wholly owned by Amazon, named Amazon, and shipping only things ordered from Amazon.com is actually not at all related to amazon.com, that is, until Bezos started telling the various state governments that he'd shut down these shipping companies that he and his company are totally not related to and have absolutely no power over, costing the state X jobs if they didn't stop demanding that amazon.com collect sales tax. That's probably around the time the corp lawyer tackled him and told him to kindly shut the fuck up.
Re:[sigh] (Score:5, Insightful)
One more reason to leave California.
If you pay the use tax as you are supposed to, this doesn't matter. If it does matter, then it shows the point of why Amazon should collect sales tax...
BS taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
In case anyone forgot, the US gov't - and by extension the states - aren't automagically entitled to a piece of everything.
Property taxes are generally to provide for local services, police, fire, streets, education.
Income taxes are generally meant to fund the operation of government, and its (allegedly) limited functions.
Gas taxes are essentially a user fee, to fund use of the highway system (and ironically to help fund the poor struggling oil companies through tax breaks).
Sales taxes are likewise LOCAL in function - they're justified by the 'infrastructure' that allows commerce to happen.
So why should internet retailers pay local or state sales tax? Everything's already been paid for at least once.
In terms of the bandwidth needed to secure the transaction and the shopper, both the shopper (through his internet fees) and the vendor (through his bandwidth charges, etc) are already paying for the hardware - wires, property easements, hefty communication taxes. In terms of shipping the goods from the vendor to the customer, someone on one end or the other is paying postage that supposedly already covers this. The seller, through the price of his goods, covers his business costs, property taxes (and the concomitant services already covered therein), etc.
About the only thing that isn't explicitly or implicitly paid for in an internet sale is the bureaucracy involved in administering, levying, and collecting the tax. Put another way: without internet sales existing, government operates, and provides a certain level of services to the public. This should be covered by tax revenues. Now add internet sales to the picture. What specific service is the state providing that it didn't provide before? I can't think of a one. Sure, the police have started branching out their pedo squads to the interwebs, and the state Attorneys General have some more fraud cases to investigate, but I doubt either of those functions have been a net increase in manpower or services - rather, they've drawn resources from other functions already performed to add these to the mix.
Yes, cue the Liberal Left posters who cheerfully want to pay more taxes. I invite them to do so. But the fact is that the US and State governments are not entitled by their very existence to a piece of every transaction that takes place in this country.
We the people need to fund our government adequately, and we do so through a varied panoply of taxes. But a bewildering array of taxes doesn't mean that we need to sit back passively and let ourselves be double-dipped just because legislators have built too confusing a structure to figure out.
Re:[sigh] (Score:2, Insightful)
You do realize you have to pay that on your income state tax otherwise right?
If you don't like the tax vote or leave, do not just steal from your fellow man.
Re:Amzon isnt dodging anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Horseshit. Before the Internet, interstate catalog sales were NEVER taxable. That the individual states have decided to get greedy and attempt to collect on sales tax for transactions out of their jurisdiction doesn't make it incumbent on the citizens to make it easy for them to do so. Shame on Amazon for caving on this.
Horseshit yourself. They've always been taxable. The only difference is whether the tax is withheld by the seller or if the buyer has to include it on their income tax form.
Re:[sigh] (Score:2, Insightful)
Because they do business in California.
I love how conservatives love states' rights, until the states decide to go ahead and do something they don't happen to agree with personally.
Re:Amzon isnt dodging anything (Score:5, Insightful)
"While thats true in theory, in actual practice the onus is on the retailer to collect sales taxes."
No, it's not. In fact, if the retailer is in a different state, with no "physical presence" in the purchaser's state, then it is highly illegal -- unconstitutional in fact -- for the retailer to collect sales tax.
To get around this, states have enacted what they call "use taxes". But it is up to the individual -- very definitely NOT the retailer -- to report on, and pay, use taxes.
Re:Amazon vs. the CA legislature (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that they have a better plan up their sleeve.
Presumably they're thinking Congress will do something before the 1 year wait is over.
Yea, congress is going to effectively increase taxes in an election year. Sure thing.
Re:[sigh] (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy shit, so much THIS. Germany has amazing safety nets, and at the same time understands how to properly allocate labor in businesses, going so far as to not laying people off when times get slow, but keeping people on the payroll to train and prepare them for when the economy rebounds so ramp-up is much faster.
Germany is single-handedly keeping the Euro together at the moment, by backstopping the PIIGS with crumbling economies (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain). They can be as "socialist" as they want.
Re:[sigh] (Score:5, Insightful)
Then work to change the law. If need be break it in public and be arrested. Breaking the law in private shows you to be nothing more than a common thief. You pretend to have some lofty ideals, but you won't stand up for them so we know this not to be the case.
Re:[sigh] (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:[sigh] (Score:2, Insightful)
I do. They also are often tax cheats.
I can dislike cheats and thieves at all parts of society. Fix the log in your own eye before pointing out the splinter in your brother's.
Re:[sigh] (Score:2, Insightful)
1. What source is that? They dont even link to the original document where they gathered these numbers which arent even from an offical source. My sources came from 2 major news outlets with government documentation to back it up.
2. The blog post is from 2004, at least my sources all reference official government documentation from 2009 and more recent.
Sorry but you're really going to have to try to use a better source than some blog post with no documentation or credible sources.
Re:[sigh] (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:[sigh] (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a theory. California is going to give them a year without paying taxes. Amazon is going to take a year to start building a shipping center in a nearby state with a much lower population—say, Nevada—and in 364 days, Amazon will announce the immediate closure of its California operations.
Re:[sigh] (Score:4, Insightful)
You may be too young to know this but there was this thing called "mail order" before there was Amazon and it, like Amazon, did not have to collect sales tax if the company did not have a physical presence in the customer's state.
Re:[sigh] (Score:4, Insightful)
Breaking the law in private shows you to be far wiser than sacrificing yourself in a lost cause.
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
--Henry David Thoreau