NY Times, LA Times Want Amazon To Collect More State Taxes

theodp writes "Recalling that CEO Jeff Bezos originally explored placing Amazon.com on an Indian Reservation near San Francisco to 'have access to talent without all the tax consequences,' the NY Times argues it's time to put an end to the e-tailer's 'entity isolation' tax-avoidance games. The LA Times chimes in, saying Amazon's claims that collecting sales tax constitute an undue burden are 'worth a horselaugh,' noting that Amazon boasts it has no problem keeping track of millions of unique products."

Comments

Re:How do you think it works in the EU ?

[DrXym]

Amazon has to collect taxes in countries where the law makes it mandatory, e.g. in the EU. So it's not so hard.

I believe it would hideously complicated to implement requiring lawyers and accountants to sift through tax laws to figure out what it needs to collect, what it needs to declare to revenue etc. Other smaller retailers manage it, and Amazon themselves manage it in outside the US. So it is lame for them to claim they can't do it from a technical, fiscal or legal standpoint. I can well understand why they wouldn't want to do it from a sales standpoint though.