Amazon Forbids Crossing State Lines With Rented Textbooks 125
New submitter Galaga88 writes "In what is probably another attempt to evade charging sales tax, Amazon's terms of use through Warehouse Deals forbids crossing state lines with certain rented textbooks. The penalty for doing so? Retroactive forced purchase of the book. At least it's yours to keep afterwards. 'Some experts believe the policy is another reflection of the extreme lengths to which the company continues to go in order to avoid collecting state sales taxes. But could Amazon’s use restriction and other complicated rental conditions cause problems for students or lead potential textbook renters to take their business elsewhere? It seems like a policy that would be nearly impossible to enforce. But Richard Hershman, vice president of government relations at the National Association of College Stores, points out that if a student has textbooks sent to her home state and ships them back from a different state where she attends college, Amazon could easily note the new shipping location.'"
Covering butt (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Covering butt (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Covering butt (Score:4, Insightful)
That "ridiculous lawmaking" is state and local governments trying to collect sales taxes.
This is a whack a mole competition where corporations look for ways to avoid sales taxes and states try to patch up the loopholes.
The corporations could just step up and acknowledge their civic responsibility to collect and pay sales taxes but they don't... hence the game.
Re:Covering butt (Score:5, Insightful)
It's certainly a doable thing, but it ain't easy, nor is there any mechanism for knowing what is the 'correct' tax to charge at a given point.
Next up, is it shipping address? Billing address? what if the tax rates are different between them?
What if the tax rate varies on other factors?
What if my IP says I'm in Sweden, what then?
It's not as easy as collect the tax when there are quite a few permutations that don't tell you when they change.
Re:Covering butt (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not, there are people with computers and databases that track this information and it all can be done automatically.
You can obfuscate it if you're trying avoid paying tax or you can just pay the tax.
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Who gives a shit? State and local governments have no jurisdiction over Amazon as outlined in the Constitution. Amazon has no infrastructure and uses no infrastructure in many states. Why should they be taxed? The use tax is on the onus of the person receiving shipments.
Of course, if states make reciprocity agreements to force local businesses like Amazon to charge taxes on out-of-state residents.. that's another thing.
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You don't need physical presence in a state to be considered as having a nexus [about.com] in that state and subject to collecting taxes.
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You don't need physical presence in a state to be considered as having a nexus in that state and subject to collecting taxes.
What you can maybe do is have a company that doesn't exist in any state; E.g. Canadian headquartered company that owns a subsidiary in various states, and another foreign subsidiary.
There is one subsidiary that owns the website, that makes all the buys/sells with peoples. The company that owns the website doesn't own any real-estate, doesn't have any facilities, doesn't ow
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It's not simple. That's why we have computers.
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Oddly enough, computers are not typically good at making complex judgement calls, like determining whether or not a given product is "food" under the arcane definitions in various cities, counties, and states. That requires a person to research the product, research the law, and apply the latter to the former.
Years ago, before Amazon changed to supporting sales taxes, there was an effort by several online retailers to negotiate with states to create a uniform set of taxable categories, so products could be
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The people who make "food" generally understand that it is "food" and this checkbox can be ticked and the computer doesn't have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.
I'm sure the states would be happy to just collect a flat 10% on everything with no complex rules, exceptions, etc. but this would upset a lot of corporations and special constituencies who would immediately go to work demanding special exemptions for their special needs and soon you would have the same complex set of rules.
In fact, I believ
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The people who make "food" generally understand that it is "food" and this checkbox can be ticked and the computer doesn't have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.
The problem is that it might be food in one county, and not food in another.
Is an handbag an untaxable article of clothing or a taxable household good? That varies by jurisdiction too. How about a decorative scarf, or a bikini?
Basically you end up with a two dimensional array with products on one axis and jurisdictions on the other, and one rate for each combination. Oh, and any of those jurisdictions can pass a new law at any time, giving notice in the local newspaper or whatever.
Sure, it gets done, but
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It can get more arcane than that, in Washington they tried to tax candy differently then other food and we ended up with a odd weird system where a twix chocolate bar was not considard a candy bar but a hersheys bar was and taxed at a different rate fortunately we managed to get that tax repealed because it was so arcane and hard to know what was considered candy
Re:Covering butt (Score:5, Interesting)
Believe it or not, there aren't people with computers or databased that track this information. Sales tax regions are geographical constructs don't correspond to particular zip codes or streets or anything useful like that - you can have two houses that are in the same street and zip code but have different sales tax rates. Hell, two halves of the same house can be in different regions with different sales tax rates - try handling that in a sensible way. There's no automated way of mapping from an address to a sales tax region and there's never going to be.
Re:Covering butt (Score:5, Insightful)
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I love that our system of laws basically creates businesses that have no purpose but helping people comprehend the system of laws.
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and yet, a lot of people don't blink to pay for a CPA to do their taxes, or just buy turbotax. did you even think this through before posting?
He said that it is ridiculous that you should have to pay a company in order to file your taxes. You said that people do that all the time without blinking.
Perhaps you should consider that both of you could be correct. People do ridiculous things all the time, like posting non-sequiturs.
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Sales tax regions are geographical constructs
So they correspond to bounding boxes defined by GPS coordinates. And addresses are like wise definable in terms of GPS coordinates, and this is rapidly taking place. I'd be surprised if 80%
Determining whether an address is inside or outside of the bounding box is very doable in an automated way.
Hell, two halves of the same house can be in different regions with different sales tax rates - try handling that in a sensible way.
Assuming this is actually a real issue
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it is bad. For example my grandmothers neighborhood is in an oval that is not inside the city limits even though on all sides it is part of the city limits this was a really problem because there was a meth lab down the street and it took monthes for the cops to do anything because the county sheriffs and the city police kept trying to make the other one do it. Boundries are very arcane.
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I find filing my personal income tax exceedingly complicated what with all the possible permutations of credits/deductions/income sources/etc, so perhaps I will just throw my hands up in the air and not bother filing.
Or can only wealthy corporations skirt the law because things are "too hard"?
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Or can only wealthy corporations skirt the law because things are "too hard"?
Yes.
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This more than manageable and there are already services out there that provide an up-to-date database to their customers. Home Depot, Best Buy, Apple, and others seem to have little trouble calculating the correct sales tax when a customer orders online.
They calculate tax from the shipping address not the IP address.
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Home Depot, Best Buy and Apple already know the local tax rates because they have physical presences in those states and already calculate the taxes. Amazon does not have the physical presence that they do.
I'm all in favor of there being a standardized place and method, but without it, there really is a burden placed on companies trying to do business on the web. Amazon might be able to swing it, but what about the mom & pop store selling on the internet? How e
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Oh, lookee here, another one!
http://www.zip2tax.com/ [zip2tax.com]
So let's continue to freak out about the complexity of a problem that has already been solved.
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Of course, the service they're offering is actually impossible because you can't determine sales taxes from a normal zip code - there are often multiple sales tax regions within one zip code. I have a feeling you'd get into fairly deep legal shit if you relied on them to calculate sales taxes.
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That's funny because both links I provided support street address lookup.
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It's not as easy as collect the tax when there are quite a few permutations that don't tell you when they change.
Find the highest sales tax rate any state or region charges, and bill the buyer that amount for tax recovery.
Transfer the money to a subsidiary whose job is to figure out which tax rate applies, pay to the relevant authorities, and keep the difference between the highest tax anywhere and the tax they had to pay as their profit.
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And then get sued for fraud, because that's what charging sales tax that is not in fact due is.
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And then get sued for fraud, because that's what charging sales tax that is not in fact due is.
No, because they have a right to do this. They just have to list the line item as "Taxes and Fees"
Essentially, they are being told the vendor is collecting and assuring they will pay the tax due, but the customer isn't informed as to how much the tax turns out to be, because the retailer doesn't know at the time of the transaction, and instead the customer is being required to pay an administrative
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Sorry, that's bullshit (Score:4)
That "ridiculous lawmaking" is state and local governments trying to collect sales taxes.
No, that's state and local governments trying to coerce corporations into collecting sales tax for them, when there is already a use tax law, and it's the state and local governments job to do the collecting.
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Actually it's the consumer's job to report it.
You're right... the state and local governments should make a law to that effect. And enforce it themselves, instead of asking corporations to enforce it for them.
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Or do corporations (including Amazon) attempt to outwit state / federal laws by offering to self-govern the collection of taxes? The last thing they want is more government oversight. If we look to industries other than publishing, we'll find many of them do a half-assed job which they perceive is better than government control (say, the energy industry).
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I don't know if you have noticed it but this is the way it works for most taxes. If you check your pay stub (if you have a job), you will see that the company you work for has a legal obligation to collect all kinds of taxes... FICA, FUTA, SDI, state and federal withholding. Yes, companies have a legal obligation to collect these taxes. It's the law. Yes, companies are subject to the laws of other states. If you want to do business in California, you need to follow California law even if you are in another
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And that's why a new tax plan that only pays for the govt by property taxes. No more income taxes. If you own a house, you pay taxes, if you rent, you don't. Own a 5 million dollar house? You pay a lot more money than someone who owns a 100k house. Own an expensive warehouse, split the cost between all your customers. Seems like a workable plan.
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> the reason they can offer such a cheap price all the time is that they dont have to have sales tax.
I'm pretty sure you didn't mean that. There are several reasons why Amazon can offer a cheap price, including *not* having to build, populate and maintain brick-and-mortar stores, plus doing things in volume, having centralized warehouses, and other savings. I suspect that the least of these is that they don't have to pay sales tax. (I'm pretty sure you meant *charge* sales tax, so I won't quibble that
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Something Worth Banning (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure I'm not alone in being fed the fuck up with corporations taking control of different aspects of our lives via unilateral contracts. I think it's high time we demand such obligations be banned, thus empowering consumers to at least have a little say in how a contract is worded and executed.
Unilateral contract == legalized rape entirely too often.
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Yep, if you give the same contract to every single person you deal with, it's not really a contract, and more of an imposition.
Legal term: Contract of Adhesion (Score:5, Informative)
See here: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/contract+of+adhesion [thefreedictionary.com]
adhesion contract (contract of adhesion) n. a contract (often a signed form) so imbalanced in favor of one party over the other that there is a strong implication it was not freely bargained. Example: a rich landlord dealing with a poor tenant who has no choice and must accept all terms of a lease, no matter how restrictive or burdensome, since the tenant cannot afford to move. An adhesion contract can give the little guy the opportunity to claim in court that the contract with the big shot is invalid. This doctrine should be used and applied more often, but the same big guy-little guy inequity may apply in the ability to afford a trial or find and pay a resourceful lawyer.
In essence, the "lawyer" in this case for students would be a class-action lawyer, and now you understand why major corporations and the wealthy (who, in general control them through stock ownership) hate the idea of class action suits and have done their best to have forced arbitration, banning class actions and the like.
I'd rather we have class actions that slap down these corporations rather than have these sociopaths-by-design run amok. Call me a socialist if you will.
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The problem with class actions is that nobody has faith in them. Anytime I get a notice about a class action I might be eligible to be part of, I summarily ignore it. Why? The only payout is for the lawyers, and occasionally the class members get coupons for pizza. I like pizza, but I don't like being slapped in the face.
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I think for me the biggest factor is the pizza itself. Being slapped in the face with a nice well-made slice isn't half as bad as being slapped with a slice covered in curled pepperoni, each filled with molten grease the temperature of a railroad flare..
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Mmmm... Railroad flares... mmmmdrool.
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The problem with class actions is that nobody has faith in them. Anytime I get a notice about a class action I might be eligible to be part of, I summarily ignore it. Why? The only payout is for the lawyers, and occasionally the class members get coupons for pizza. I like pizza, but I don't like being slapped in the face.
Even if that is the case, which I don't doubt in many cases, the fact remains that there needs to be some check to the immense powers that corporations have today. The US Government is completely captured. Without a legal fallback you would expect to see contract requirements and clickthroughs when you buy gas for example.
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I think it's adorable that you think such a method makes much of a difference.
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Your cynicism and apathy are the problem.
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This isn't really Amazon, this is crazy tax laws that Amazon is trying to not deal with.
On the flip side you could just be happy with Amazon raising their prices to cover the sales taxes?
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On the flip side you could just be happy with Amazon raising their prices to cover the sales taxes?
Why would they have to "raise" the prices? I hope Amazon won't raise their price to cover the sales tax in another state as I already pay tax on my Amazon purchases. Just tack the tax on like every other business does.
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I'm sure I'm not alone in being fed the fuck up with corporations taking control of different aspects of our lives via unilateral contracts.
This isn't a problem with a corp, in this case its state law makers, really. And you're not the first /.'r to miss this. How can so many "consumers" get this wrong?
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While I understand that Amazon's actions are in regards to state taxes, that's not what I was talking about - I was referring to the unilateral contract that allows them to dictate to their customers what said customers can or cannot do with the goods/services rendered.
Sigh... but yea, I'll also point out that this country's taxation system is royally fucked up, if that makes you feel any better.
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Absolutely correct (Score:2)
If there's one this history has taught us, it's that giving more power to the government always results in more freedom!
Wait, no, no, that's never happened.
So I graduated and moved (Score:2)
What about border area students? (Score:2)
commuting students or even students in where a nearby road is the boarder.
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commuting students or even students in where a nearby road is the boarder.
What, you mean, like Vancouver Washington, which has sales tax, and Portland, Oregon, which doesn't, both cities having residents who work in the other city? Seems to me, they're screwed. The law doesn't take into account that people live in areas where they often cross arbitrary state lines. Sorry...
(Yeah, it is stupid...)
Hahahaha. Oh, you're serious? (Score:2)
Let me laugh harder. What lawyer decided that this would be a money-maker?
I don't give a shit (Score:2)
The beauty of having an epub reader is that I will never buy ebooks from Amazon.
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The beauty of having an epub reader is that I will never buy ebooks from Amazon.
Out of curiosity, how often is it again that you have to mail back rented ebooks?
Enforcement? (Score:2)
Explain to me how exactly they would enforce this policy? They have no idea where the book goes unless it's RFID tagged or something. You could take the book around the world and they would be none the wiser. Just make sure you return it on time and all is good.
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Ah but that is where it could be a pain in the ass. You go to school out of state. You want your books before the term starts so you order them to your parents. You finish the term and then need to return them. You then have to drag them back home to your parents to mail them back. Probably pretty tight windows since they probably want the books back in plenty of time before the next term so there is a good chance the state they are in when they need to go back is different than the one that you got them.
Th
Importing textbook (Score:2)
And this is why I never had any compunction about buying the "non-US" (drastically cheaper) versions of standard textbooks. The whole industry is scam, driven by the silly ways we fund education grants and loans.
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That's what I did. It was definitely worth it.
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Somehow, though I'm not quite sure exactly how, I don't think their talking about mailing back ebooks. Call me crazy....
No crossing state lines with textbooks. (Score:5, Funny)
Unless the textbook is 18-years old. Allowances will be made if you're only two or three years younger than the textbook.
Evade, or avoid? (Score:4, Insightful)
To "evade [wikipedia.org]" taxes is illegal. But to "avoid" taxes is legal.
Even a "tax shelter [wikipedia.org]" that avoids paying 100% of tax might be legal, depending on circumstances.
There is wide agreement that taxes discourage people from certain behaviors, and tax breaks encourage people to do whatever gives the tax break. So, for example, J. Random Person could invest in solar panels on the roof of his home, and potentially get enough of a tax credit [energystar.gov] to offset his tax liability.
Should we be angry that someone paid no taxes? The tax break on solar panels was there to encourage people to invest in solar panels, and J. Random Person did that. This is the system working as intended. Society wanted to encourage more solar panels, and more solar panels were in fact installed.
Now, consider Amazon. The current weird tax system is the law of the land. (I think a "flat tax [asktaxguru.com]" with no exceptions would have many good features, but it's just a fantasy at this point. We are so far from a flat tax that it's really not worth discussing.) If Amazon can do some weird thing like banning interstate use of rented books, and the tax system is currently set up to reward that, then I don't blame Amazon for doing it.
If you don't like it, maybe you should tell your elected representatives that you would like to see changes in the way sales tax works.
P.S. I am not claiming that the current sales tax system was intentionally set up to encourage Amazon to take these steps. The tax code is so convoluted now that weird corner-cases must be expected. But whether this was intended or not, if that's what the law encourages Amazon to do, and we don't change the law, we shouldn't be surprised if Amazon does this.
So if you have duelling border cities.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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So, what then for cases like Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington? They both are reasonably sized cities which border each other on a state line, effectively creating a single metropolitan area. Many sleep in Vancouver, yet live their lives in Portland; and, of course, vice versa.
Isn't this an issue even without Amazon getting involved, since Oregon doesn't have a sales tax.
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So, what then for cases like Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington? They both are reasonably sized cities which border each other on a state line, effectively creating a single metropolitan area. Many sleep in Vancouver, yet live their lives in Portland; and, of course, vice versa.
Isn't this an issue even without Amazon getting involved, since Oregon doesn't have a sales tax.
To a certain extent, although there are known ways to cope. For instance, in Washington, you don't get charged sales tax if you show an Oregon ID. I think the OP was speaking of the case where a Portland resident rents a book from Amazon, then (if I'm reading the article right) crosses over the river to go to work, and suddenly is required to buy the book.
Not too difficult to check (Score:2)
Unfortunately between Geo-location based on IP address and GPS it wouldn't take long to establish if someone is outside of state lines. There are problems with either method of course. IP based addressing isn't very helpful behind a gateway, and isn't always 100% accurate. GPS chips can give false readings for any number of reasons. Neither method is foolproof to a level good enough to be able to automatically charge someone money.
My concerns go beyond this being heavy handed. What kinds of checks and balan
Sales taxes to be collected in Georgia after 9/1 (Score:2)
Amazon will be collecting sales tax in Georgia starting 9/1, and I expect the other states will fall soon. So pooh-pooh on your sales tax theory.
Bad idea (Score:2)
Make the e-book of lesser ( or no ) value in many cases.
When do they start doing it with purchased books?
How are they tracking these books (Score:1)
What about a federal VAT on internet sales? (Score:2)
The online sales the states must tax are intrastate. Interstate is still the problem for states and vendors alike (The new law requiring collection notwithstanding.), But the federal government clearly can tax such commerce -- electronic or otherwise. It is established law.
A Value Added Tax is a very fair kind of tax that only taxes the end consumer. (Fair being a relative term here.) It is an account-book pass through so it does not hurt sales up and down a supply chain. That is, VAT does not get writt
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Only taxes the end consumer? I thought that with a VAT, it got retaxed at every step of the chain. The manufacturer sells to the wholesaler? Add 20% VAT. The wholesaler sells to the retailer? Add 20% VAT. The retailer sells to the customer? Add 20% VAT. So the customer ends up paying 72.8% tax on that item.
Is that incorrect? If so, could you please explain how?
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As a retailer you get charged VAT by your wholesaler and you charge VAT to your customer. The difference goes to / returned from the government.
So something that ends up being tax exempt as a retailer you recover whatever VAT you were charged on the product. Schools are often tax exempt but you buy from the wholesaler as if you are selling to the public.
If you sell at a loss you recover the VAT you lost.
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In the UK businesses claim back VAT they have spent at the end of the year. This does add a metric crapload of paperwork throughout the year for all the stuff you need to claim back on. The advantage of VAT over sales tax is that it is harder to avoid, in theory.
Laughable (Score:2)
The area I live in is defined by mountain ranges, and the communities are along the river. The State boundary is on one side of that river, but it doesn't stop school districts from being comprised of communities from both sides, because that's how the communities are defined. There's also a College on one side and many of the students rent apartments on the other.
But, hey, maybe this says more about States than it does about Amazon.
I suggest lawful protest (Score:2)
I'm going to rent $50,000 worth of Textbooks. When they come in; I'll pack them in my car and drive across 10 states... all the way to Seattle, Washington, to return them in person.
Of course they won't be able to charge my CC $50,000, and they won't have a chance of collecting payment for the books in full.
Who's with me?
OK... well maybe not... for those of you who aren't that courageous.... rent a few books, take them across state lines maybe, take photos of the whole thing... Go back home,
Checking where it's shipped from... (Score:2)
But Richard Hershman, vice president of government relations at the National Association of College Stores, points out that if a student has textbooks sent to her home state and ships them back from a different state where she attends college, Amazon could easily note the new shipping location.
I'm sure Amazon will start tracking this shit. Does Amazon give a fuck where a return was sent from? Do they even look? I'm sure everything gets dumped by the truckload into their return centre by FedEx or UPS or whomever, and that's the end of anyone giving a shit about shipping in that process.
Home for vacation - taxes (Score:1)
So if my daughter, who goes to college in Boston, rents books there, and then brings the books home during a vacation, she if violating the contract. That is ridiculous.
As for taxes, the online sellers should definitely have to pay sales taxes, but there is a more general issue. I hate sales taxes because they are regressive. If I had my way, the only taxes I would have would be income taxes. The tax rate would be base on amount of income regardless of source. This means that wages, dividends, capital gains
Why buy any e-textbooks at all from Amazon (Score:2)
when you can download them on The Pirate Bay and other sites for free?
Man, I wish there were tablets and modern internet when I studied. It would have saved me a lot of money on books and a lot of carrying bags with heavy books in it.
It's not Amazon's job... (Score:1)
This is not Amazon's job to enforce. If sales tax is due then it is up to the consumer to declare it on their return.
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This article is another dribbling piece of FUD. Amazon can say what it likes in its contracts and TOS agreements, but its words, no matter how much legalise they use, cannot deactivate general legal rights. If an individual rents a textbook, that individual is free to travel wherever they like in the USA without potential penalty.
They only lose the game if someone plays against them.
For most people, paying the purchase price for the book because of the "violation" is going to be cheaper than hiring a lawyer.
So guess who wins.
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