Anita Demetropoulos, a Maine shopkeeper, figured she would never see the day when her most relentless competitor, Amazon, would be forced to collect sales tax.
Now that Congress seems ready to do that, she is no longer sure it matters. Even in losing, the e-commerce powerhouse is triumphant. It no longer needs the tax break to vanquish its foes — and could even make money by collecting the new taxes for other retailers.
Following the rules
Few comments:
1) Amazon was just following the rules that were in place. The rule was that if you did not have a physical presence in a state you did not have to collect taxes if you were selling online. 99% of the businesses selling on the Internet were going by the rule. If a business wanted to they could collect the sales tax and remit it, but almost no one was doing that. The only businesses that were doing that were ones that had a physical presence in a state.
2) I know a small Internet retailer that complains and complains about Amazon and they have even complained about Amazon and the sales tax. The irony is that this retailer does the exact same thing and only collects sales tax for people in their state.
3) In most states people have an obligation to pay the tax to their state on their own. No one was following the rules. Interesting to see all the bellyaching about Amazon but given the chance no regular citizen was paying the tax and they did not want to.
Well said
Not the same thing but tax related in the UK. Much uproar about Amazon paying everything through the Amazon Europe company in Luxembourg so virtually no direct corproation taxation being paid.
But EU law says as long as the tax is paid somewhere in the EU it’s all legal. I don’t think people realise that the company you are dealing with when you buy from Amazon.co.uk is actually based in Luxembourg, maybe people should look at their reciepts. It’s written there very clearly! Not like they are trying to hide it.
If people want companies to be paying more tax then the laws need changing, not moaning about how these companies aren’t paying their tax. They are following the laws 100% (as any business would). It’s not their responsibility to pay more than they need to, that’s madness for a business.