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Amazon Re-Opens Affiliate Program In California
An anonymous reader writes "Due to Governor Jerry Brown temporarily repealing the tax law opposed by Amazon, the Amazon Associates Program has been brought back to California."
Amazon will still have to collect sales tax in California in 2013 unless Congress intevenes before then.
Fucking sleazy, blackmailing, tax dodger.
Who do you think should pay for the roads that your products are delivered on?
Amazon will still have to collect sales tax in California in 2013 unless Congress intevenes before then.
Or.. Amazon will happily make their sales tax-free profits until 2013, and then pull out of California again.
Like Amazon would continue to ignore the 8th largest economy in the world.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Because all they were doing is stopping affiliates in California. Now while Amazon doesn't want to do that, they like affiliates because they make money on them, it really isn't a big issue. They still sold to California, and there is nothing CA could do to stop them. Amazon itself and their affiliates in all the other states would still sell to buyers in CA.
You want to have the post office open your mail and assign a value? I guess that is one way to make up for the revenue shortfall and get Saturday deliveries back again.
It must be fun to have a large corporation use your small business as a bargaining tool.
Amazon wrote: "...accounts were closed due to the prior legislation"
More specifically, Amazon closed your accounts because they did not like the prior legislation.
why not make this internet tax holiday that actually benefits regular people permanent?
This is about bringing jobs to California, not bringing jobs to America.
If a company moves from one state to another, does this make our economy somehow better?
Having states squabble and bicker and compete with each other for business does not help. It only takes up politician's time and adds bureaucracy and adminstration - effort that does not contribute to production.
Existing companies already have the employees they need to make their product. This is not true in all cases, but as a general rule it works quite well. Jobs come from new companies forming and from newish companies growing big.
We've done everything possible to stifle new business in this country[1][2], and this is just another card in that deck. Giving a break to an existing company creates a barrier for the creation of a new company which might compete. It makes the existing company weak and complacent.
If GE pays no taxes, it's hard to start a company making a competing product.
We could turn the recession around and have a vibrant economy very quickly if we could stop propping up stagnation, and focus on encouraging growth
[1] Innovation: Patent trolls, nuclear patent portfolios, submarine patents, court district shopping, DMCA, ACTA, losing tech to other countries
[2] Infrastructure: Rationed internet(data caps), net neutrality, spotty cell coverage, polluted water supply, inscrutable laws, discretionary enforcement, tax complexity, offshoring
It is called "Use" tax, which is defined in the instructions for form 540:
"California use tax applies to purchases from out-of-state sellers (for ."
example, purchases made by telephone, over the Internet, by mail, or in
person). .
This is followed by a worksheet which walks filers through the process of calculating the amount to report (e.g. on line 95 of form 540).
I guess I should say that CA tries to collect this tax. I have paid it every year I resided in CA (or other states that required it) for over 10 years. I don't recall ever meeting another person who claimed to pay it when the subject came up (granted, it rarely comes up).
Have someone else buy it (who lives in a different state) but it gets shipped to you. The buying occurred outside California, so no tax is due.
First the kids and minorities started hanging out there all day long.
This made older shoppers uncomfortable and they stopped shopping there.
Established chains move out.
Chains catering to the kids and minorities move in.
The mall fails... Because amazingly the kids and minorities don't have the money to support the stores and are just there to hang out.
I've seen it happen to 3 local malls. They are giant empty buildings now. With maybe an anchor store like sears still left. The rest is empty.
The one mall that actively runs kids out of the place is doing fine tho. Or at least the shops are all full and they have customers.
Call it racist if you want... But those malls are still empty today. (shrug)
There are a few providers of a sales tax database, and at least one that provides a calculation service, strikeiron.com. This may not be a problem for multibillion dollar businesses, but it is for smaller businesses.
The first method requires you to pay for monthly updates. It requires the business owner pay for a developer to write an data munging script, and/or an import script for the e-commerce software. It also requires the business owner to pay for a monthly import of the data into his e-commerce software.
The second method requires you to pay services fees. Many of these are out of reach for small businesses, which would force them to close. The only ones who could afford it are the giant companies you seem to despise.
Accuracy and liability may be another issue. With a database download, updates are provided once monthly. This may not be frequent enough to guarantee accurate tax rates. Ultimately, who is responsible for rate or calculation errors with either method?
If interstate sales tax collection is mandated by the government, then the government should provide free access to current and accurate rates. Given the increase in sales tax revenues that can be expected from mandating interstate sales tax, the cost to provide access to this information is negligible. A minuscule percentage of the sales tax revenues could be appropriated to building and maintaining this service.
I may not disagree that Amazon uses this as a loophole to undercut brick-and-mortar stores. However, there are certainly technical and financial issues with mandating interstate sales tax, which would hurt small e-commerce businesses and start-ups. Mandating this tax without providing a reliable, accurate, server based method of obtaining tax rates is a bad decision, IMHO.
If you order something from a Brick and Mortar in Seattle for delivery to California, you would not pay California taxes. Why should it be different just because it's over the internet?
For the love of FSM why don't they just pass a 3% state internet sales tax and be done with it. The current mold model of taxation based on physical store location, which internet retailers don't have and quite honestly never will, is not suited for the internet business model and needs to be addressed in a fair manner. I mean hell, do they plan to have brick and mortar retailers do the same thing as amazon if they sell an item online? An internet sale is and internet sale after all and I live in a lower sales tax county vs the county of my closest lowels and for larger items with shipping, especially free shipping, would mean a substantial cost savings for me.