Amazon Delivering Groceries? It's Coming, Thanks To Sales-Tax Politics

curtwoodward writes "Amazon has been delivering groceries to people in its hometown of Seattle for a half-dozen years, but the experiment has never spread any further. But this year, rumors about Amazon Fresh expanding to new cities are coming out every month — Reuters just reported that Amazon could start the service in L.A. within a week, and in San Francisco in the coming months. What gives? Why expand now? Look no further than Amazon's long-running battle with state and federal governments over sales tax policy. After more than a decade of resistance, Amazon has spent the last two years cutting deals to collect sales taxes in states all over the country. And it's pushing for a national online sales-tax system, which appears to be within reach. That's the last obstacle to Amazon getting into the grocery-delivery game — a step that should worry not only grocers, but UPS and FedEx, too."

Comments

More regulation = less choices

[Darkness404]

So in other words, Amazon has managed to lobby legislators into having a national internet sales tax which it can fairly easily implement (since it designed it and is a large company after all) in order to screw over both the average Joe AND make the playing field less competitive (the US tax code is far from simple...)

Gee thanks Amazon!

Re:More regulation = less choices

[GodInHell]

Nope. That has no relationship to the bill at hand.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[h4rr4r]

Incorrect.
Amazon would do this if there was no sales tax too.

The only reason they did not is that by only enforcing sales tax on business operating in that state they had more to lose than to gain by opening this new line of business.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Tailhook]

managed to lobby legislators into having a national internet sales tax which it can fairly easily implement

Your public school reading comprehension, that that of 'Insightful' mods, is showing.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[d34thm0nk3y]

In your first sentence you say the new code is easy to implement. Then you say that is a bad thing because the US tax code is difficult to implement.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[hibiki_r]

It'll be very easy: All you have to do is, instead of opening your own online store, you just list your items in Amazon, and they'll collect the tax for you!

So much money to be made being a middleman.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[ron_ivi]

easy to implement.

Easy for a large multinational with full-time tax attorneys on staff to implement.

Painful for small businesses.

(not too unlike Health Care - which is easy if you have a HR department with nothing better to do; but is really painful if everyone in your company is trying to get work down that's relevant to your main business)

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

No, in this case, more regulation = more choices. Please read the article in the future.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, Amazon has managed to lobby legislators into having a national internet sales tax which it can fairly easily implement (since it designed it and is a large company after all) in order to screw over both the average Joe AND make the playing field less competitive (the US tax code is far from simple...)
  Gee thanks Amazon!

The easiest way to fuck them over is to just get rid of the State sales tax. Then Amazon gets to pay the internet sales tax and watch the local businesses pay nothing.
Sales Tax is a pile of crap to begin with, luckily I live in a State where we don't have one.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[EvanED]

The "national internet sales tax" is a stupid and incorrect name for what happened, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the bill.

What they got is for Congress to say (or is it still a bill? I forget) that states can require Internet vendors to collect sales tax for remote sales to those residents. There's no "internet sales tax", it just moves the burden of collecting sales tax on internet purchases from the residents (who will often not pay and is basically unenforcable) to the retailers.

In other words: if states were to get rid of the state sales tax, then Amazon wouldn't be collecting any either.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Darkness404]

Its easy to implement for Amazon because Amazon is a large company with a team of lawyers and helped design it. In 2012 Amazon had revenue of about 60 billion or so, spending a couple hundred thousand (or more) on compliance with this proposal is a very small dent. However, the cost of compliance will be felt much more for smaller companies or individuals who sell online and may very well put them out of business. After all if you're selling something as a hobby, its not going to be much fun or profitable if you have to spend hundreds of dollars on either talking to a tax attorney or several man-hours trying to figure out the taxes on your own. Amazon can afford that, they've got the personnel and the spare cash, your "mom and pop" style internet store may not.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[geekoid]

Then why duidn't they? they are just now getting a sales tax. By your 'logic' they would have been doing this a dozen years ago.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Darkness404]

Right, because clearly less profit = more incentive to start a business! Clearly more paperwork = more incentive to sell online!

There's a reason why there's lots of small online stores: because you don't have to deal with the headaches of a "traditional" store, you don't have to get a business license, you don't have to fill out paperwork to get a tax ID, etc. I can sell online in minutes instead of weeks. I can spend most of my time making and creating my product rather than worrying about how to run my store. Take away that incentive and many of the small stores will close.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[shutdown -p now]

So before, Amazon was unfairly competing with local brick & mortar stores because they didn't have to pay the same sales tax.

And now you're saying that they're unfairly competing because they do have to pay the same sales tax?

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Mitreya]

Easy for a large multinational with full-time tax attorneys on staff to implement.
Painful for small businesses.

Isn't it funny how that works?
Same with tax-code -- theoretically, everyone is subject to the same tax codes. However, people with several full-time attorneys on staff seems to do a lot better in minimizing their tax bills.
Coincidence?

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Mitreya]

So before, Amazon was unfairly competing with local brick & mortar stores because they didn't have to pay the same sales tax.
And now you're saying that they're unfairly competing because they do have to pay the same sales tax?

No, Amazon will unfairly compete with other online stores, because small online stores will not be able to afford a dedicated department (with several attorneys) for the sole purpose of online tax collection.

The playing field with brick&mortar stores may even out a bit as a result, but B&M stores probably still wouldn't have enough in-stock items to remain competitive.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the insightful sibling post "No," distributing food locally would require Amazon to have a local presence. This would mean they would have to pay the sales tax in that state. This would cost them a LOT of money. Now that they already pay the sales tax, just as locals do, they have nothing to lose by increasing their local presence.

Now, was this actually hard? or ... ?

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're selling goods online now and not paying sales tax on local sales now, you're already breaking the law.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the bill enabling online taxation requires some standardization as to what is taxed for the several thousand tax districts (even zip code is not precise enough to determine what applies sometimes) to make this less onerous, but regardless, someone (Income Tax preparers like H&R Block? Business Software folks like Quicken? Tech Companies like IBM or Microsoft? Specialized Startups? Amazon as part of their Cloud Server business? Google glean more data for ads?) will come out with a turn-key tax compliance system for mid-tier retailers - there is some floor below which it doesn't apply (e.g. the family farm that sells a few thousand dollars worth of mail orders).

Re:More regulation = less choices

[larry bagina]

Companies don't pay sales tax.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[ttucker]

Companies don't pay sales tax.

Actually they do, and forward the cost to the customer. Ultimately, it is the company that is liable for the sales tax being paid, not the individual.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[kamapuaa]

No. That is absolutely not what this is about. Random cynical statements are not insightful and shouldn't be modded as such.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Seumas]

Amazon has fought against internet sales tax (or, rather, the idiocy of making people who don't live or work in one state paying taxes in it) for quite a long time. They only recently caved in and gave up bothering to fight. Remember, they even went so far as to shut down their affiliates program in response to states trying to force out of state companies into paying their sales taxes (the residents' duty to do so).

It seemed clear that when they gave up bothering to fight against it, they had something planned. This seems like what it was. "Well, if you can't beat them - join them".

I say, good on them. All of these idiots out there perpetuating this myth that the lack of enforcing out of state collection on state sales taxes was harming the little mom and pop stores in cities . . . little mom and pop stores that no longer exist. Not because of "the intarwebs", but because of the big national chains that already squeezed them out decades ago. They had this crazy idea that if you suddenly had to pay sales tax online, you would stop shopping at Amazon and Newegg and other outlets online and trudge across town into their stores to deal with their shitty staff and shitty stores and shitty checkouts and shitty parking lots and all the other BS that goes along with it.

Instead, they're going to find that people who weren't going to shop at Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Lowes, Home Depot, Ralph's and so on without sales tax collection will *still* do so . . . because if you're going to pay sales taxes either way, you might as well have the pleasure of the things showing up effortlessly at your door step the next day or two. In fact, they'll probably find a lot of people who will do whatever they can to throw their business to online services just to spite them.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Jane Q. Public]

"So in other words, Amazon has managed to lobby legislators into having a national internet sales tax which it can fairly easily implement (since it designed it and is a large company after all) in order to screw over both the average Joe AND make the playing field less competitive (the US tax code is far from simple...) "

It's worse than that, since a "national internet sales tax" is unconstitutional, despite what the Supreme Court previously said about the possibility.

I have laid out the reasons why several times, at length, here on Slashdot. I really don't feel like doing it again today.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Lunix Nutcase]

No, companies collect sales tax. They do not pay it.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Sloppy]

The companies who competed with Amazon, said they did. If I shop at Store X to pay $n, whereas the same item at store Y costs me $n*1.1, store Y's assertion that they have a .1 tax rate, really isn't something they made up, pulled out of their ass. You might be right in saying they don't "pay" the .1 tax, but oh, it's there and it matters in a major way as a market force. It's just as if they were paying it.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[AK Marc]

What they are referencing here is not a national internet sales tax. And Congress may regulate trade between the states. Explicitly. So there is not even any question of whether this is or is not constitutional. It's a change to federal law to allow states to bill non-resident entities for taxes that would be owed if resident, but aren't owed currently. No new taxes are levied. They are just collected from a different point, and *never* by the feds. The Constitution has no problems with that.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[ttucker]

No, companies collect sales tax. They do not pay it.

The company writes the check to the state sales tax agency, and is the sole responsible party (both monetarily and criminally) for the correctness and timeliness of the payment. In the US it is customary to list prices before sales tax, and then to "collect them from the consumer", but at no time is the consumer ever liable for the businesses's collection or payment of said taxes. When a business neglects to charge the consumer for sales tax, it still must be paid.

In other words, businesses collect money from consumers, to pay their sales tax obligations.

Corporate income tax is a sales tax too, because it is based on income, and paid by the consumer in higher prices. The only difference is that in one case the consumer sees the price increase clearly, and in the other case it is a hidden charge.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[0100010001010011]

I've spent probably $500 at Amazon in the last few months and I have to pay sales tax (KY). It shows up in 2 days. (And if it ships from the distribution center in town the next day). Excellent return policies. Usually the cheapest price and I can do it from my couch without having to drive to the store.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

no actually his customers are breaking law since customers were supposed to report it

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Gavagai80]

The internet sales tax law doesn't require any company selling less than a million dollars to collect tax. That's not a mom and pop internet store. They can afford a developer.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

A mom&pop store may have 5% - 10% left after expenses. That is 50k - 100k for them to live on as income if their gross sales are $1M. It's from this meager amount that they will have to pay for a developer.

But that is not what will sink mom&pop. It's the audits. Dealing with routine sales audits from 50 states will cost more than they can afford.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[DogDude]

Oh, quit with the "several attorneys" FUD. It's simple software.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

little mom and pop stores that no longer exist

Have you been to San Antonio, one of the ten largest cities in the US? It's almost nothing but mom & pop stores.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[edb]

Be careful whereof you pontificate. Different states have different laws.

In California, what you said is largely correct. The seller is responsible for remitting the sales tax to the state, whether it was collected from the purchaser or not. In fact, if the seller collects less than is due, the seller must remit the full amount due; if the seller collects more than the amount due, the seller must remit the entire amount collected (i.e. can not keep any overcharged tax).

In Pennsylvania, and perhaps other states, it is specifically ILLEGAL for the seller to include the sales tax amount in the retail price. The seller is legally REQUIRED to collect the sales tax as a separate amount from the purchaser. Or at least this was true a few years ago when my company was selling at a conference in Pennsylvania; it may not be true today, but the law was made quite clear to sellers at the event.

This is just a tiny, tiny hint of the complexity of the sales tax situation nationally. Also consider that a specific food item may be taxable in some states and not in others. Indeed, that same food item might be taxable in some jurisdictions (city, county) within a state, and not in others within that same state.

And then get into whether the purchaser is exempt from sales tax or not. For example, in many states, schools do not pay sales tax. In others, they do. It gets very interesting when a teacher goes to a professional conference in another state, and will not be reimbursed for any amount charged for sales tax even though the sale is not exempt in the state where it took place.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Jane Q. Public]

"What they are referencing here is not a national internet sales tax."

The person I was replying to *DID* reference a national internet sales tax. So what's your point?

"And Congress may regulate trade between the states."

No shit, Sherlock. Look, I'm not going to get into an argument with you about this. As I stated earlier, I've explained at great length here, more than once, exactly why it's unconstitutional, and I don't feel like doing it again right now.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[AK Marc]

Feel free to link to your own previous post. It's being called a "national internet sales tax" it isn't. Just like the USA PATRIOT Act wasn't patriotic. They can call it whatever they like, the name isn't binding and can't render the substance unconstitutional. The meat of it is just trying to harmonize the methods states communicate internal tax rates with outside parties (something they don't do at all now, and there are plenty of places where neighbors in the same ZIP code have different tax rates). Today, the *only* practical way to keep up on all the taxes is to hire someone else to do it, and there are companies that do that and only that.

Harmonizing the states to facilitate trade is one of the stated purposes of the federal government and one of the few with explicitly defined powers to do so. If you find this unconstitutional, I don't think you'd find anything the government has done in the past 100 years to be Constitutional. If that's your stance, then it's far enough from reality that I don't need to hear your explanation. It's nutjob territory anyway.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

As I stated earlier, I've explained at great length here, more than once, exactly why it's unconstitutional, and I don't feel like doing it again right now.

And now you've had at least two chances to link to any of those "at great length" explanations, yet you've chosen, twice, to continue to be a pompous ass instead. If you had such great info then lay it plain...otherwise shut your pie-hole.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[h4rr4r]

Because that would have made them pay sales tax on all Amazon.

If you operate in a state you have to pay sales tax. So they avoided opening a grocery service since that would impact their main line of business by making it taxable. Now that they are going to be taxed anyway they lose nothing to do so.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[h4rr4r]

And because Mom and Pop stores suck. I worked for a few in my teen years. Without fail they were the ones most likely to scam customers, paid workers far less, generally treated them worse, had worse prices and terrible selections.

I am not sure why anyone pines for them.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

The most common sales tax scenario in the United States is for a business to advertise a price "plus sales tax" or "plus all applicable taxes". But your post doesn't have much to do with GP's post; regardless of which state we're talking about, if sales tax is being collected it is the *business's* responsibility to pay that tax bill to the government. Not the consumer's. This is why businesses can throw "no sales tax" sales. As long as they cover their sales tax bill at the end of the month (and there are usually caps on maximum sales tax collected by the government), the government doesn't care where they get the money as long as it's legal.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[S1ngularity]

Who pays the tax is a matter of price elasticity. When the tax is levied the cost is divided up between all of the parties to the transaction (shareholders, employees, customers). What proportion of the new cost to make transaction is born by which party has everything to do with their relative price elasticities.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[ttucker]

What all the states have in common, and I would challenge you to find a counterexample, is that the business reports their sales, and remits payment to the relevant taxing agency. Failing to do either correctly, the business is the party upon which penalties are levied.

This has nothing to do with the complexity of sales tax law.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[david_thornley]

How do you figure it's unconstitutional? What I see here is Congress regulating interstate commerce.among the several states. Do you think Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 ("No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.") forbids this?

Re:More regulation = less choices

[FreekyGeek]

What burns me is that the right wing gets SO up in arms about taxes when it affects rich people. Try to raise a tax that affects people making millions and they scream like children. Try to close a loophole that helps some Goldman Sachs fund managers evade taxes and you better believe there will be a filibuster in congress.

But a tax that just affects average folks buying cameras and socks online? BIPARTISAN SUPPORT, BABY! TAX THOSE PLEBES!!! All of a sudden it's "Taxes? No problemo!"

Fuckers.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

But can you blame them.... people should think about the consequences and not just the problems at the surface

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Anonymous Coward]

They can afford a developer.

There's clearly no ethical conflict of interest for a Slashdot reader to be advocating changing the law to provide more jobs for developers. None what so ever. After all, it's widely known that all Slashdot readers are computer illiterate, so none of them ever do any software development.

How about abolishing sales and use tax entirely, as an ethical alternative? Numerous discussions on Slashdot in the past have pointed out that the existing sales and use tax laws are logically inconsistent and have some serious issues with respect to violating fundamental rights, so that's both morally and ethically the correct thing to do. Not to mention that having avoidable complexity in the legal system simply encourages the parasites, err... I mean the legal professionals, to screw things up for the rest of us.

While we're at it, let's have a simple income tax. It doesn't have to be a flat tax, but it should be simple or the laws involved simply create ethical conflicts of interest for the legal profession, which, given that legal professionals are the one's writing, passing, judging, and enforcing the laws, is really, really bad for a society.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[redlemming]

Isn't it funny how that works?
Same with tax-code -- theoretically, everyone is subject to the same tax codes. However, people with several full-time attorneys on staff seems to do a lot better in minimizing their tax bills.
Coincidence?

No. Not a coincidence. The US legal system is riddled with ethical conflict of interest to the benefit of the legal profession. It's the reason why we have so many laws on the books, most of which only get enforced sporadically (and are therefore unnecessary). It's the reason all three major areas of "intellectual property" law are badly broken. It's the reason we are the "land of the lawsuit" and most of the rest of the world makes fun of us for being idiots. It's the reason ordinary people get hammered and humiliated for minor offences by the so-called "justice" system while politicians get away with all kinds of stuff.

We probably need to remove legal professionals from all decision making positions in the executive and legislative branches of government, at all levels, and make their role purely advisory. Even then we would have issues with the judges making decisions that benefit their profession at the expense of society (something that seems to happen with dreary regularity). Not likely to happen.

Taking control of legal ethics away from the bar associations might be the best we can hope for.

Unfortunately, very few people outside the legal profession bother to actually read law textbooks or follow court cases, which means that very few people know just how bad things have gotten.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[lsatenstein]

So in other words, Amazon has managed to lobby legislators into having a national internet sales tax which it can fairly easily implement (since it designed it and is a large company after all) in order to screw over both the average Joe AND make the playing field less competitive (the US tax code is far from simple...)

Gee thanks Amazon!

===
Would it not be in the best interest in all 50 states and territories to harmonize the sales tax? By that, sales tax would be a flat rate, and not proportional or inversely proportional to the item cost. Of course, we know that in most places, groceries are not taxable. Where I live, raw chicken ready for BBQ is not taxable, but cooked hot BBQ chicken is. Doughnuts are taxable if the purchased quantity is fewer than 6.
I buy chocolate bars from the baking section, not from the check-out rack or the confectionery showcase.

Yes, tax us into weight loss.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Jane Q. Public]

"Feel free to link to your own previous post."

Unlike some people, I'm a frequent poster here, and I'm not about to go searching through thousands of old posts to satisfy your whim. If you want to find it, go find it yourself.

I've already told you I don't intent to argue about it right now. Your post could be considered to be trolling.

Re:More regulation = less choices

[Jane Q. Public]

"How do you figure it's unconstitutional?"

Repeat:

"I have laid out the reasons why several times, at length, here on Slashdot. I really don't feel like doing it again today."

Live Free or Die

[tedgyz]

No worries here in NH if they ever offer the service here. No sales tax.

Now with regards to our no-motorcycle-helmet law, "Live Free and Die" is a more appropriate slogan.

Re:Live Free or Die

[h4rr4r]

Look on the bright side, lots of possible organ donors.

Re:Live Free or Die

[geekoid]

"Live free and let the tax payers pay for you idiocy" is more like it.

Re:Live Free or Die

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Darwin's law is sufficient for that.

Re:Live Free or Die

[Black Parrot]

Look on the bright side, lots of possible organ donors.

And Amazon will deliver them while they're still fresh!

Re:Live Free or Die

[game kid]

When you want your urghhhhhh to smell like eau, call PristiZombie. Powered by Amazon Fresh and LichCo.*

*LichCo not affiliated with the corpse of LILCO.

Re:Live Free or Die

[bobbied]

Same here in Texas... Helmets are optional if you have health insurance and are over 21.

Of course, having an accident on a motorcycle and not having a helmet is pretty much an example of Darwin's natural selection process in action... Strike that... RIDING a motorcycle in an urban area in Texas is an example of natural selection processes, folks drive crazy round here....

Re:Live Free or Die

[fyngyrz]

No worries for buyers. Plenty of worries for retailers. Same thing here in Montana.

Re:Live Free or Die

[fyngyrz]

*net buyers and retailers, of course

Re:Live Free or Die

[AK Marc]

Nah, riding a bike is safe. You are more liekly to avoid them, and the Texas drivers are so bad that they don't see you if you are in a bike or a car anyway, so you drive both as if invisible, the difference is that on a bike, you are much more maneuverable. Why yes, I did ride a bike in TX, and never had a car hit me.

Re:Live Free or Die

[Anonymous Coward]

No one gives a fuck what you think, cunt face.

Re:Live Free or Die

[bobbied]

Point taken, but when the worst happens, the rider of a bike is going to take the worst of it, even with a small car. You may be really skilled in riding a bike, or you may be lucky. You may even be both. But, you are still taking a bigger risk on a bike than most of the nutty drivers out there who are seemingly trying to run you down. Someday you may run into a situation that you didn't see coming and/or couldn't avoid with the skill and equipment you have. I strongly suggest you have as much protection as you can, including full face helmet, boots, gloves and protective clothes, the whole 9 yards. Even then, you are taking a much bigger risk than the nut case who hit you in his smart car or mini cooper.

Re:Live Free or Die

[mjwalshe]

well if NH charged sales tax they could reduce local property or income tax - which I suspect woudl be wildly popular with the voters

Re:Live Free or Die

[AK Marc]

In a crash between car and bike, the bike will be worse off. And yes, I'm always in full gear. Lane splitting is legal here, and I find that much safer than when I go with traffic. People insist it's the opposite of safer, but I have more close calls in lanes than between. When you are in a lane, car or bike, someone may want to be where you are. When you are between lanes, nobody wants to be where you are, they just may want to pass through where you are on to some other place. In practice, I find that distinction to be meaningful.

Re:Live Free or Die

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, NH doesn't have state income tax, either, so it couldn't be reduced without instituting a negative income tax system (like a state-level EITC). And converting our high property tax into sales tax is actually not a wildly popular idea.

Groceries: Amazon's Iceberg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dozens of massive startups have wasted billions trying to do what Amazon plans to.

Re:Groceries: Amazon's Iceberg?

[h4rr4r]

None of them had the resources and the know how.
I already order hard to find grocery items from amazon. Mostly imported products not available in the USA that I enjoyed as a child.

Sock puppets coming back too?

[Tablizer]

WebVan lives!

Re:Sock puppets coming back too?

[MrEricSir]

Between Google Shopping Express and Instacart, it's safe to say that Webvan has been fully resurected.

Re:Sock puppets coming back too?

[cheesybagel]

Great! Now all we need is to resurrect Pets.com's festering corpse.

Re:Sock puppets coming back too?

[PRMan]

Home Grocer was wayyy better.

Good

[Kohath]

Fed Ex, UPS, and most large supermarkets are union operations. Less business for them means less power for union bosses and more power for individual citizens.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You're pointing your finger at the wrong unions. If I don't like unionized Safeway, I can literally cross the street here and shop at non-union Whole Foods and dozens of little mom-n-pops that probably don't have unions... or even workers with green cards; but that's another discussion.

I can't walk across town and choose another police, firefighter, or education system. Worse yet, working people pay taxes to support the inferior crony service that PEUs provide. They can crow all they want about protecting the middle class; but they are picking the middle-class pockets.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

w/o the long, courageous and bloody struggle of Labor? You and your young children would all be covered in coal dust right _now_ and all waiting for that 14 hour day of mining to be done....

Re:Good

[geekoid]

Does Amazon have a delevery company? Everythuing I order is deleived by USPS,UPS, or Fed Ex. and one itme by a Samoan wearing a tu-tu.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

weekends? 8 hour days? The Union gave you those, you Randroid ignoramus. Those were radical concepts until organized labor ended the total dehumanization and near slave conditions of the majority of American workers.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Fed Ex drivers aren't unionized. Employees of the largest US grocer, Walmart, aren't union either.

Re:Good

[Kohath]

Tell it to someone from 50 years ago. We don't have to keep paying today's union abusers to thank people who died 50 or 75 years ago.

Re:Good

[MrEricSir]

Fed Ex, UPS, and most large supermarkets are union operations. Less business for them means less power for union bosses and more power for individual citizens.

Right, because nothing says "power for individual citizens" like sweatshops and 80 hour workweeks.

Re:Good

[Kohath]

Tell it to someone from 50 years ago. Today's union bosses have been trading off work their great grandfathers did for long enough. What do they have to offer anyone in the future besides cronyism, coercion, and corruption? Expensive and inconvenient groceries?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

by rejecting Labor, you doom your children to slave wages and hideous working conditions and a 3rd world economy for the US.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

He means our corporate citizens you insensitive clod.

Re:Good

[Kohath]

Wal Mart employees all work 80-hour weeks, I guess.

Re:Good

[Nadaka]

The unions built the middle class. Without the unions, this country would still be an assbackwards 3rd world hellhole.

Re:Good

[Nadaka]

You do if you want to keep your grand children out of the coal mine. The plutocrats who abuse their employees are still in power and work day and night to undo the protections that the unions have put in place for American workers. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Re:Good

[Kohath]

... said the union guy from the year 1937.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to add to that, the aforementioned benefits come without paying any dues. If conditions at store X are somehow unfair, they should be made fair at all stores, not just the ones with unions. That implies that the proper advocate for labor is a party, seating legislators to pass laws applied equally to everybody. The unions argue that such-n-such is unfair, the see to it that "fairness" is applied unequally.

Re:Good

[cheesybagel]

If what is happening in the EU right now is any indication even the US will get a push towards getting more Chinese like working conditions sooner rather than later.

Re:Good

[Kohath]

Do these plutocrats all wear monocles in this story? Do they cross the Atlantic on their steam ships?

Re:Good

[Nadaka]

That is because the Randroids all see themselves as John Galt like innovators who will obviously ascend to the monied class, instead of the sheep led before the slaughter that they are.

Re:Good

[MrEricSir]

Many Wal Mart employees make less than $10 an hour. They're on strike for a reason.

Re:Good

[chaim79]

And the buggy whip gave us a method for motivating our transportation, however it is no longer needed in the vast majority of modern life, much like unions.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Walmart has various forced employees to work off the clock (resulting in class-action lawsuits, several of which have been settled or lost by Walmart), kept workers as part-time to avoid providing them with health insurance, and in Mexico payed them, in part, in Walmart vouchers, until the Supreme Court there put a stop to that.

Re:Good

[stephanruby]

Less with FedEx, their drivers are independent contractors.

Re:Good

[Kohath]

Unemployment is very high and it has been for about 4 years. There's a glut of idle labor. Why would you pay person X $11/hour for work persons X1-X200 will gladly do for $9.75/hour?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you using a chisel and tablet? Four typos in two lines. Gazooks, man!

Re:Good

[MrEricSir]

The rate of unemployment has nothing to do with whether employees should be able to eat, make rent, and be able to retire some day.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The 8 hour day was pushed durring the industrial revolution because people stop working effectively after 8 hours. Henry Ford didn't want to pay someone the same wage for hours 9-14 that he did for hours 1-8 because they weren't as productive. So "no more after 8 hours" became the 8 hour day. It wasn't the people's choice, it was the owners.

Re:Good

[PRMan]

What? Like only 6 weeks of vacation a year? Or only 3 months notice from your employer when they lay you off with guaranteed time off for interviews. 35-hour workweeks? Siesta rooms for lunchtime? Yeah, I've heard working in the EU really sucks.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

And the buggy whip gave us a method for motivating our transportation, however it is no longer needed in the vast majority of modern life, much like unions.

Unions are why buggy-whip manufacturers didn't transition into a burgeoning workforce-whip market.

A generation+ of skyrocketing productivity accompanied by stagnating incomes suggests that either unions are more needed than ever, or people are just schmucks.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Slavery built the middle class. Without slavery, this country would still be an assbackwards 3rd world hellhole. Should we still have slavery?

Re:Good

[CRCulver]

What you are describing is (with the exception of generous holidays) a feature of Western Europe. Come to the EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe and it's not so rosy. I'm in Romania, and I can assure you that business owners are out to screw you any way they can.

Re:Good

[Nadaka]

Slavery built the plutocrats. Killing off the unions will return us all to slavery.

Re:Good

[Pseudonym Authority]

Slavery actively prevents a middle class and pretty much ensures that everyone is either rich, poor, or a slave; labor is not a reoccurring cost as it would be with a free man, so the poor can't become middle class through their own hard work.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

No, some of them have Pince-nez glasses.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell it to someone from 50 years ago. Today's union bosses have been trading off work their great grandfathers did for long enough. What do they have to offer anyone in the future besides cronyism, coercion, and corruption?

We'll get those things in the future regardless of whether unions exists. What unions have to offer is better working conditions for workers in any future than that same future without unions.

You might be "happy" with your current working conditions. But if you are foregoing potentially better working conditions out of an inability to understand or achieve the true value of your labor, you are just a schmuck (even if a relatively pampered schmuck).

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously another uneducated, Fox-News-believer American. Only a few EU countries are like that.

Re:Good

[AK Marc]

As the CEOs get more and more of the profits as pay, the need for unions increase. 10 people conspire to share money to make money, and they are capitalist heroes. 10 people conspire to agree to terms to make money, and they are socialist villians. Why do you hate free association so much?

Re:Good

[AK Marc]

No, 35 hour weeks so that Wal-Mart doesn't have to pay benefits.

Same effect, but different, primarily due to the laws in place thanks to unions.

Re:Good

[foniksonik]

They will soon if they end up delivering groceries. They'll have trucks, drivers and people paying delivery fees. Amazon just got in the delivery business. Next up they'll start offering it to others and get a cut of that money too.

That's the real nugget here, not the old discussion about tax laws.

Re:Good

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, and the unions are run by those plutocrats.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Why Unions? Why do we even need these pimp lords as all they do is screw their members over, ultimately. We already have federal standards in safety. Start enforcing them with inspections. The problem of a hostile work environment has long been solved. Unions just force markets into bankruptcy. Globalism is going to happen no matter what you do. Unions just make businesses fail faster, that's all.

Re:Good

[phantomfive]

Really? The reason we should join unions is for our grandchildren? Think of the children? If that's the best you can come up with, pass.

Re:Good

[Nadaka]

Oh. there are plenty of things that unions are still fighting for, living wages, proper healthcare, collective bargaining, etc. But the gains to workplace safety and child labor laws that have been mostly won are still under constant attack by the right. And without vigilance those will fall and we will see an end to the middle class and our future generations fed to the economic machine for the enrichment of the monied elite.

Re:Good

[Nadaka]

The defense of these things will be necessary as long as the right continues to attempt to strip and neuter the laws and agencies that are supposed to represent the workers interests. Why do you think they call for the end of the the EPA and OSHA and other protective government agencies? Every workers right and workplace safety is under constant attack by the right.

Re:Good

[phantomfive]

Generally I'm not willing to join a union unless I see personal benefit. So for now, I'm not joining.

Re:Good

[Nadaka]

You do personally benefit from the collective bargaining, increased wages and benefits and workplace safety negotiated by the unions.

Re:Good

[ignavus]

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Surely the price of freedom is a lot cheaper than that: it cannot be more than lifelong vigilance.

What? Are you going to keep vigilant about freedom after you die? Forever and ever?

In any case, most people stopped being vigilant long ago.

Perhaps the real price of freedom is occasional wake-up calls.

Re:Good

[phantomfive]

Some of those things I benefit from. If a union comes that can get me things I want, I will join.

I won't join because of benefits provided in the past. If unions come promising salary based on "time worked at the company" instead of skill, then I will actively oppose them.

Re:Good

[DNS-and-BIND]

Funny, the today the unions have become plutocrats. Who will protect us from the corrupt unions? Get out of your fantasyland, it's not 1933 any more.

Re:Good

[Stuarticus]

It's "gadzooks".

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

that is completely ridiculous, slavery predated any middle class in the US by a hundred years

Kindle

[SnarfQuest]

Can I have them download breakfast to my Kindle?

Re:Kindle

[Black Parrot]

Can I have them download breakfast to my Kindle?

No, you'll be printing your breakfast on your 3D+flavor printer.

Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[SuperKendall]

No worries here in NH if they ever offer the service here. No sales tax.

I wonder what part of "national sales tax" you missed. Everyone gets to pay sales tax on internet purchases going forward.

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[EvanED]

wonder what part of "national sales tax" you missed. Everyone gets to pay sales tax on internet purchases going forward.

The part where that didn't happen.

As I just said in another post, there's no "internet sales tax", just the ability for states to require internet retailers to collect sales tax on sales to residents. If a state has no sales tax, there will continue to be no sales tax.

(I make no statement on whether the federal bill/law is good or bad, just that the name "internet sales tax" is apparently incredibly misleading.)

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[EvanED]

Sorry, substitute "national sales tax" for "internet sales tax" in my comment.

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[DanTheStone]

You missed it. There's no federal sales tax; it's still just state sales tax on the state you live in. In NH, there's no state sales tax, so we don't have to pay any despite this. What does change is that our NH businesses have to collect tax on behalf of other states when you buy from us online. So when you guys buy stuff online from our businesses, they'll now have to collect sales tax for your state. That's why we fought it, not because consumers would have to pay more, but because our businesses will have to do a lot more work.

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[AK Marc]

There is no national sales tax. The push was for a centralized tax system. Alaska, NH, and others will still collect no sales tax. The problem was places like Dallas, where the city spans multiple counties, and the sub-area taxes are precinct-driven (things like DART - public transport). So neighbors with the same ZIP code could have had different tax rates. That level of granularity is not captured by anyone other than specialist tax-tracking firms who exist solely to sell databases of addresses to tax rates to mail-order businesses (of which Internet is a subset). Amazon has been pushing for something that would force mail-order businesses to collect state taxes only. Something that's already captured in everyone's database. That's a national tax policy, but isn't a national tax. You missed the word "policy". You are the only one that missed the point.

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[CrimsonAvenger]

As I just said in another post [slashdot.org], there's no "internet sales tax", just the ability for states to require internet retailers to collect sales tax on sales to residents. If a state has no sales tax, there will continue to be no sales tax.

And if a business in such a State sells something to someone living in Kenner LA, they'll have to be able to figure sales tax for LA, Jefferson Parish, Kenner, and such sales tax holidays as might be applicable on any particular item at any particular time...

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[EvanED]

And if a business in such a State sells something to someone living in Kenner LA, they'll have to be able to figure sales tax for LA, Jefferson Parish, Kenner, and such sales tax holidays as might be applicable on any particular item at any particular time...

No, not really. If LA wants Amazon to pay LA sales tax, then LA must make freely available software or a service that will do said calculation for Amazon (and if said software gets it wrong, Amazon will not be liable for the difference).

I'm not entirely convinced that said system will always be easy to implement, and PRMan (I think that's the name of the poster) in a reply to a different post of mine points out an interesting privacy issue that I'm not sure what the answer is (/if there is one). But at the same time, I also think it's certainly conceivable that the law will impart a relatively low burden in terms of implementation cost.

Though again, I don't feel strongly one way or another about whether the law is "right" or "wrong".

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[AK Marc]

There is no national sales tax, there is no Internet sales tax. There is just a law that requires sellers collect appropriate taxes for the location of the sale. Taxes due do not change, just a minor change to who collects them, and from whom.

Re:Good-Bye "No Sales Tax"

[spitzak]

they'll have to be able to figure sales tax for LA, Jefferson Parish, Kenner, and such sales tax holidays as might be applicable on any particular item at any particular time...

Wow that's complicated. They will probably need to use a computer connected to the internet to get that done! Oh wait...

This is still good news for customers.

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

I can't count the number of times Amazon Fresh has freed up my wife and I to spend time together. I recognize there is no way for small grocery stores to compete, but it's hard to sympathize with difficulties the big grocery chains have with competing. Failure to recognize the need consumers have for this service is on Kroger's head, not Amazon's and not the US government's.

Re:This is still good news for customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't count the number of times Amazon Fresh has freed up my wife and I to spend time together.

You will sing a different tune when your local grocery chains go out of business. Amazon may start raising prices then...

Walmart already serves as a prime source of groceries for many people in certain areas. That is scary.

Re:This is still good news for customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that scary? WalMart is all about cost cutting and keeping prices low. If they raised prices after taking control of the market, other chains would come back. Grocery stores probably only trail gas stations (on gas) for tight margins. Sure the meat won't match a specialty butcher shop nor the produce match that of a local farmer's market, but it is comparable to the other options around here for quality. Selection is probably only about 2/3 of what is available at the nicer groceries, but that's because most of the WalMart customer base is drawn from the lower end stores that lack that same selection rather than those who patronize Whole Foods and such.

Re:This is still good news for customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

as a UPS driver delivering groceries from amazon, I can't tell you the number of housewives I've laid. I'm like the milkman 2.0. Seriously, at least once a week.

Re:This is still good news for customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

we need UPS drivers to fuck our ugly fat women !

Re:This is still good news for customers.

[bad-badtz-maru]

I don't know about your area, but where I live Walmart is higher than grocery stores on many, many items when comparing exact items.

Bad

[Tavor]

Okay, lets take your example of Supermarkets. Most of them are union. The only major non-union Supermarket in my area is Wal-Mart. Working for a Union outfit, I do have to pay more in union dues. But I make whole hell of a lot more working for a union place than I ever would at Wal-Mart. Everyone I know at Wal Mart is on the edge, barely making ends meet, and on assistance programs, such as Food Stamps, TANF, etc. (California already recognizes the problem here, drafting a new law where by places where workers are encouraged to use Food Stamps to make up their shortfall in pay would be fined $6000. That number is based strictly off of Wal Mart, where each employee on Food Stamps costs CA $5,990 per employee.)

Now tell me again how less regulation and less power to the Unions is a good thing again? We've been there before. Individual citizens are powerless against Grover Cleveland and the U.S. Marshals.

Re:Bad

[Kohath]

The only major non-union Supermarket in my area is Wal-Mart. Working for a Union outfit, I do have to pay more in union dues. But I make whole hell of a lot more working for a union place than I ever would at Wal-Mart.

Why should anyone care? Do you care about us? What does the union do for anyone besides the union?

Everyone I know at Wal Mart is on the edge, barely making ends meet, and on assistance programs, such as Food Stamps, TANF, etc.

Does the union support politicians who want to shrink these programs? No. They do not. They support politicians who want to expand these programs. Unions are part of the problem. For this reason alone, I hope Amazon and Wal Mart and all the non-union alternatives displace the union supermarkets.

Re:Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should anyone care? Do you care about us? What does the union do for anyone besides the union?

Well yeah, the purpose of the union is to ensure better working conditions for their members. Just like the purpose of a for-profit corporation is to make a profit. But most unions want better working conditions for all workers, hence the various labor laws that we have thanks to them.

Does the union support politicians who want to shrink these programs? No. They do not. They support politicians who want to expand these programs. Unions are part of the problem. For this reason alone, I hope Amazon and Wal Mart and all the non-union alternatives displace the union supermarkets.

In what way would shrinking those programs be good for unions? Or for low-wage workers, or for America as a whole? What's your replacement for food stamps, starvation?

Re:Bad

[CRCulver]

Why should anyone care? Do you care about us? What does the union do for anyone besides the union?

In many businesses, unions insist that the same treatment be provided to non-union employees. If you don't join the union and pay your dues, you don't get to participate in collective bargaining sessions, but you still benefit from whatever was achieved by the union in collective bargaining.

In some countries (that can boast a high standard of living), this is how minimum wage is set. The government doesn't get involved in legislating wages, it simply leaves everything to be worked out voluntarily among employers and employees. Isn't capitalism a good thing?

Re:Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Unions are part of the problem.

Yeah, I definitely hate weekends, 40 hour days, workplace safety rules, etc.

The Amazon way

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The groceries will go through the patented one-lick only cart,

2) You can buy used groceries for less than the new kind,

3) You will get recommendations about what other groceries were purchased by people who bought the same items as you,

4) After a certain amount of time these groceries will stop working/disappear from the fridge,

5) You can eat them only if you cook them with Amazon Kindle'd fire,

6) If you store them Amazon Cloud, you can eat them from anywhere in the world ...

Oh, great.

[Black Parrot]

There goes one more reason to get out of the house.

Maybe answering the door should count...

To Quote Q from ST:TNG

[Guano_Jim]

"Oh, very clever, Worf. Eat any good books lately?"

Amazon, why?

[timeOday]

Well, I guess they know what they're getting into:

In June 2008, CNET named Webvan the largest dot-com flop in history, placing it above Pets.com and eight other sites on its list.[1] It is now owned and operated by Amazon.com.

(quoting Wikipedia)

Remember WebVan?

How is this anything other than Amazon moving into a business that Walmart could have done at any time but evidently passed on?

I predict Amazon will end up delivering groceries mainly places where other companies already do (i.e. where there is a market for it) but it won't spread much further.

Re:Amazon, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Walmart does deliver groceries to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a "test area" likely because it has the worst Walmart to people density in the nation. I've used it once a month for a few years. I rarely pay for it (shipping is often free over a certain price) and save quite a bit of money at Walmart prices. It is extremely valuable and I honestly would pay $30-$40 a shipment if I had to now.

Is it profitable? Likely not a lot, but there is a market for it everywhere once people try it once.

Re:Amazon, why?

[foniksonik]

Amazon has way more need for delivery than Walmart (well WalMart as of today). Delivery is probably one of Amazon's biggest expense lines. Why shouldn't they get into it?

Re:Amazon, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it gets Amazon two things they want. 1) They get into the grocery business. That's a business that's still run inneficiently. Amazon can do for groceries what they did for general merch. 2) They have to open up warehouses close to the point-of-delivery. Let me change that, they get, or have a reason, to open warehouses close to the point-of-delivery. That means they can also stock those warehouses with the general merch and they get a lot closer to 1-day and same-day delivery.

Amazon requires UPC

[tepples]

Except Amazon doesn't sell anything unless it has a UPC. Handmade? Micro-business? Too bad. Get your own shopping cart and implement TaxCloud.net.

TaxCloud.net

[tepples]

Easy for a large multinational with full-time tax attorneys on staff to implement.

Painful for small businesses.

Part of the deal in this interstate sales tax bill is that participating states will make TaxCloud.net available to online retailers without charge. Integrating TaxCloud.net into a cart is supposed to be no more painful than integrating a payment processor or a shipping rate service.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[bongey]

supposed to be no more painful a payment processor or a shipping rate

Try telling that to anyone that works in tax with multiple states, they wouldn't stop laughing at you.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[EvanED]

Try telling that to anyone that works in tax with multiple states, they wouldn't stop laughing at you.

Care to elaborate any? Because theoretically at least, all the complications of what items are taxed at what rate are not in the hands of the retailers; they just integrate with a free service that provides that information. I haven't looked for anything like this, but I haven't heard any actual explanation of why such a system would be complex (e.g. "matching up UPCs is hard" or something like that).

I'm not saying it isn't, just that I'd like to know more.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[PRMan]

So, we're supposed to send the UPCs of everything we buy to the feds in order to calculate the tax?

Re:TaxCloud.net

[Anonymous Coward]

the key word there is *supposed* to be

sales tax is far far more than states, counties and cities all have their own extras.
Plus when has anything with the word tax in it ever been simple? How many pages is our tax code again?

Re:TaxCloud.net

[__aasqbs9791]

Why do I have tons of mod points every day _except_ today? This needs to be modded up to 5, stat!

Re:TaxCloud.net

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone else assures you [that integrating their product is easy] you can be absolutely certain they have no idea whatsoever what they're talking about.

Or, especially if it's going to be mandatory, that they're lying.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[wallsg]

Part of the deal in this interstate sales tax bill is that participating states will make TaxCloud.net available to online retailers without charge. Integrating TaxCloud.net into a cart is supposed to be no more painful than integrating a payment processor or a shipping rate service.

And I'm sure that TaxCloud.net will handle properly classifying nice, simple things like this:

Sales of Ice Cream Cakes and Similar Items

Note that this is the real issue. While a Mom & Pop bricks & mortar store needs only get it right once, the Mom & Pop web-based store must get it right for every single item for every single state collecting tax. As the grandparent post states, this will be far more painful to a small operation, which might have a "tax person", than to a multinational with a tax department. This puff piece kind of glosses over that (emphasis mine)...

Why the number of sales tax jurisdictions doesn’t matter

Q: So, if there is an error in the rate or the treatment of an item will the CSP pay the deficiency?

A: TaxCloud is indemnified by the states, and we only use states-provided data. So long as sellers accurately categorize their item(s), TaxCloud will defend sellers from any assessments, penalties, or interest.

Don't forget that BUSINESSES PAY SALES TAXES, not the buyer. (That's why in Arizona a business has to get a "Transaction Privilege (Sales) Tax License".) These taxes, unlike most, are itemized and passed on to the consumer so most people mistakenly believe that they pay the tax. They do not. A business is not "collecting" the tax for the state. They are instead being taxed and are increasing the price to cover the tax. (This is more apparent with the "includes taxes" type sales that you may see at entertainment venues like ballparks and theaters.) This means that allowing a state to require an out-of-state business to "collect" sales tax really means that they are being allowed to tax that out-of-state business.

It is wrong for a state to be able to tax an entity outside it's jurisdiction. A state cannot prohibit mail-order/internet-order business due to the Interstate Commerce clause. What it can do (and always has) is require its residents to pay the Use Tax in lieu of sales tax that would have been paid. In some cases (buying a car in one state and registering it in another) it's easy for a state to enforce this. In most cases it isn't. It is not the fault of the out-of-state business that the state's residents, due to intent or ignorance, violate that law. All this is doing is requiring out-of-state business to work for free as tax collectors for the state. That is just wrong.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a carefully *programmed" plug board electric accounting machine to do all my accounting. How do I connect the banana jacks to this "taxcloud.net" thing?

Re:TaxCloud.net

[h4rr4r]

There is no such free service and UPCs are not U.
They are often repeated when a product is retired or some stores do not use them at all. Aldi for instance uses their own bar codes that conform the UPC standard, save for the fact that they have their own internal number.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[EvanED]

There is no such free service and UPCs are not U.

The second reason is interesting, and is sort of the biggest objection I could think of (I was considering homemade stuff).

However, the "there is no such free service" is not, because while that remains true states cannot require internet vendors to collect sales tax. It is a requirement of the bill that states would need to provide such a free service to require tax collection.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[bad-badtz-maru]

As someone who works daily with shipping rate services, you might want to audit your invoices against your quoted rate if you thought the implementation was easy.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[h4rr4r]

I meant right now. Also odds are each state will have their own free service, and vendors will be essentially forced to pay an intermediary which creates a single standard web service.

Unless you force all the states to use the same API that is what will happen.

Re:TaxCloud.net

[tepples]

The several states pay for this single standard service, which is called TaxCloud.net.

Distribution

[Todd Knarr]

I'm wondering, though. For package goods it's fine. For perishables like meat, dairy, refrigerated goods and so on, it's a bit more complicated. The supermarkets (Vons in my area) already have the distribution network and storage in place in every store they have. All they need to do for delivery is pick the stuff off the shelves (or out of the back room before it goes on the shelves), put it in a truck and go. It'll be interesting to see how Amazon deals with keeping perishable goods in stock close enough to the destination to make it through delivery intact.

Re:Distribution

[Shados]

Its the whole point. Amazon would centralize its operations to avoid taxes. Now, its customers are getting hit by sale taxes ANYWAY. So they're just putting distribution centers all over the place, since they're not gaining anything by keeping them in the middle of nowhere.

With that, comes same day shipping as well as localized warehouses. Those two together is the only thing you need to effectively be able to do groceries.

Re:Distribution

[bad-badtz-maru]

It's called a "refrigerated truck" and it's how the product came from the supplier in the first place.

Be Careful What You Wish For

[sehlat]

The brick-and-mortar brigade has been bitching for years about the supposed "unfairness" of "they don't pay sales taxes but we do." They finally browbeat Congress into doing something.

Amazon's argument was about the burden of having to keep track of over seven thousand districts (I looked this number up.), having to update them the moment things change, and the legal penalties for any failure to keep track of changes. So they asked for, and got, a national single-tax regime, which, presumably, any business selling online can keep track of and meet, including the brick-and-mortarsaurs.

And if this is a disaster for the mortarsaurs, they will have only themselves to blame for the new K-T boundary.

Re:Be Careful What You Wish For

[dlgeek]

It's not just that there are 7000+ districts, but they all have their own rules. Back in 2010, Washington had an extra tax on candy. However, Kit-Kat bars were exempt and charged at a normal food tax rate. Why? Because they happened to contain flour and were considered a baked good. Imagine trying to handle thousands of different jurisdictional rules across the millions of products Amazon carries. It'd be insane!

Re:Be Careful What You Wish For

[Anonymous Coward]

No taxes on Bibles in Georgia. Tax holidays in Texas for school supplies once a year. Etc. It is beyond any reasonable attempt at computing these taxes at any point in [legal] space and time.But the power to tax is the power to destroy. We have states power over criminals; if you make criminals of everyone then you have a power over everyone.

Re:Be Careful What You Wish For

[mjwalshe]

Ah like the legal case in the Uk over whether they where cakes or biscuits as value added tax (sales tax) is payable on chocolate-covered biscuits, but not on chocolate-covered cakes.

This will be Bezos' "war torn country" quagmire

[Anonymous Coward]

Insert name of war torn country.

If Amazon scales up nationwide, they will declare victory and sell the business to a competitor (who's actually in the food business) within five years. "We learned lots of useful stuff...."

Pets(mart).com

[tepples]

Now all we need is to resurrect Pets.com's festering corpse.

No need. PetSmart ended up buying what was left of Pets.com.

Doesn't Amazon already sell groceries?

[compro01]

It appears that Amazon already has a groceries section. This appears to be them just expanding it into a less-esoteric selection.

Re:Doesn't Amazon already sell groceries?

[Anonymous Coward]

They and their affiliates sell some groceries, but I'd be surprised if they sell perishable ones now.

It's about robots, not sales taxes.

[Animats]

This has nothing to do with sales taxes. That's a few percent. It's all about efficient warehouse and distribution operations. Doing that wrong can double operating costs.

WebVan was a popular service during the dot-com boom. They just had an operating cost problem. They had about 3% market share in 30 cities, instead of 30% market share in 3 cities. So their order processing and delivery costs were too high.

One of WebVan's former executives realized that order processing had to be much more automated for this concept to work. So he founded Kiva Robotics. Upwards of 15% of online orders are handled by Kiva robots. If you've ordered from a major online retailer, (Acumen Brands, Drugstore.com, Gap, Toys-R-Us, Walgreens...) a Kiva robot probably handled the order.

Last year, Amazon bought Kiva Robotics. The whole company. Then they started building warehouses near major US cities and talking about same-day delivery. Those warehouses will have a lot of Kiva robots and not too many humans.

While some grocery chains like Safeway do delivery, they're not very good at it. They're picking from store shelves. So they don't know, when the order is taken, if the item is in stock. Safeway tends to deliver with some items missing. Automated warehousing operations know what they have in stock when the system takes the order.

It's going to be like Webvan again. But this time, it will be profitable. The retailers who see this coming are very afraid.

Re:It's about robots, not sales taxes.

[0123456]

This has nothing to do with sales taxes. That's a few percent.

Uh, you are aware that Amazon's profit margins are typically only 'a few percent'?

The brick and mortar stores who complained that Amazon was unfairly competing with them by not charging sales tax are now going to find themselves having to compete with Amazon when they have local operations and same-day delivery. Good luck with that.

Re:It's about robots, not sales taxes.

[dkf]

While some grocery chains like Safeway do delivery, they're not very good at it. They're picking from store shelves. So they don't know, when the order is taken, if the item is in stock. Safeway tends to deliver with some items missing. Automated warehousing operations know what they have in stock when the system takes the order.

If that's the level of service that they're providing, the world will be a better place when they're out-competed. Sucks if you're a Safeway employee, but reduces the level of suck for many other people so it's a net gain. That's the reality of a proper free market. (And having shopped at Safeway in the US, the sooner they get replaced, the better IMO. Horrible place.)

Re:It's about robots, not sales taxes.

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with sales taxes. That's a few percent.

Uh, you are aware that Amazon's profit margins are typically only 'a few percent'?

The brick and mortar stores who complained that Amazon was unfairly competing with them by not charging sales tax are now going to find themselves having to compete with Amazon when they have local operations and same-day delivery. Good luck with that.

Amazon is fast becoming a Brick and Mortar store that you can't physically visit. They are trading lots of cheap employees for lots of delivery fees. Which will end up being cheaper?

Same-day delivery means that they are going to have to have a lot of distribution centers around the country and each distribution center will need a reasonably complete inventory. The amount of stock they have to keep on-hand will go up. The amount of fresh foods that go bad and need to be thrown away will go up.

Re:It's about robots, not sales taxes.

[mjwalshe]

>> Uh, you are aware that Amazon's profit margins are typically only 'a few percent'?

After the spurious licensing costs for the amazon brand are applied and the tax wizards have done their magic and hidden it away in a friendly tax haven you mean.

Re:It's about robots, not sales taxes.

[cthulhu11]

While some grocery chains like Safeway do delivery, they're not very good at it. They're picking from store shelves. So they don't know, when the order is taken, if the item is in stock. Safeway tends to deliver with some items missing. Automated warehousing operations know what they have in stock when the system takes the order.

I've used Amazon Fresh a number of times. Experiences include o High individual item cost o Progressively increasing per-delivery cost o Limited and unreliable item selection o Low item quality for fresh produce o Flaky web site, eg. not displaying a "continue" type button in some instances, leaving one to start over from scratch from a different browser hoping for it to work o Ignoring container preference (bags vs plastic boxes) o Dropping multiple huge rigid tote boxes with a couple of items each in them, refusing to take them back. I once had to run out to the street with a couple of these and beg a driver to take the damned things. Nowhere even to drop them off, they expect me to hang onto them indefinitely. o Stock presented on the web site != what they will come up with on order day. More than once I've had them accept an order for something only for them to not deliver it o Unilateral and unannounced substitutions: more than once they substituted an unacceptable product for one that I needed.

peapod has been doing this for years and with

[Joe_Dragon]

peapod has been doing this for years and with groceries things have to be out of local depots

Re:peapod has been doing this for years and with

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Peapod hasn't been doing anything like this.

Peapod, Stop&Shop's grocery delivery service, doesn't have warehouses. They have supermarkets. When you place an order with Peapod, a human employee grabs a shopping cart and actually roams the supermarket, shopping for the items in the order you submitted.

This is completely different than this Amazon initiative for several reasons. Peapod charges the same prices Stop&Shop charges, plus fixed and proportional fees. Amazon Fresh has only a standard shipping fee, and with Amazon Prime there is none. Peapod doesn't offer an annual flat-rate option like that. Also, Amazon order fulfillment is largely automated and takes place in inventoried warehouses. This system scales much better, operates with much less latency, and has the added benefit of preventing the customer from ordering items which are not available. Peapod can't compare.

Also, Peapod is terrible. They have a considerable negative impact on Stop&Shop store operations, creating additional load on the crew that stocks shelves, the management that handles ordering, etc. Any additional revenues Peapod brings in might easily be swallowed up by additional costs on the Stop&Shop side.

My point is that I order from Amazon all the time. However, I have yet to make use of Peapod, while I find myself in a physical Stop&Shop twice a week. Where Amazon has caused me to do most of my non-grocery shopping online, I can't say that Peapod has caused me to to change my grocery shopping habits at all.

Fed Ex is non union and most drivers are not even

[Joe_Dragon]

Fed Ex is non union and most drivers are not even employees.

"National Sales Tax" is a lie

[DragonWriter]

I wonder what part of "national sales tax" you missed. Everyone gets to pay sales tax on internet purchases going forward.

While that's what you'd think from the words "national sales tax", it is completely wrong. "National sales tax" is an inaccurate label (just like the more popular "internet sales tax" for the same measure was.)

The actual measure at issue that has been dishonestly described as a "national sales tax" or "internet sales tax" is federal legislation specifying particular conditions under which states can require out-of-state merchants to collect sales and use tax on sales into the state. It is not, itself, a tax of any kind, and the taxes under it are neither national taxes, nor are they taxes specific to the internet.

I dont care who wrecks the grocery curve.

[ralphaostrander]

They have it coming. Any way I can poke my grocery store in the eye I will take it. I will be more than happy order grocerys on line if it is the same as everything else. Like HDMI 69.99 at store 3.99 on line. beans 99 to 1.49 at store 39 cents on line. I have some cans I dont want I can sell them too. I hope it stuffs the store price down their throat. Everything in every grocery store is over priced by at least 50 percent.

TaxCloud.net

[fyngyrz]

Integrating TaxCloud.net into a cart is supposed to be no more painful than integrating a payment processor or a shipping rate service.

When someone else assures you across the board that integrating something of theirs is [some level of difficult], into something of yours, where they know exactly nothing about your situation, work load, code, or available resources, you can be absolutely certain they have no idea whatsoever what they're talking about.

Further, for systems that implement home-grown shipping and payment, even the context is meaningless. "no more difficult" could be extremely difficult.

There are systems out there for whom the developers aren't even available any longer.

Whenever the government decides they're going to make every business, everywhere, do something, the load will neither be equal nor fair, and further, it may be fatal to the business for any number of reasons.

Do not want

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care who's doing it, I can't see this being successful. I recall a company (Peapod, IIRC) trying it years ago and failing horribly, and I don't see how it will be any different now. What low paid grocery worker do you want to have picking out your produce for you? Imagine the worst fruits and vegetables on the shelves being shipped directly to your door. So you're going to go pick those out yourself, aren't you? And if you're going to go to the store to get that kind of item, you might as well pick up the rest of them at the same time.

Re:I dont care who wrecks the grocery curve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Grocery stores have some of the smallest margins in retail. The AP article even mentions this. Please don't compare markup on a HDMI cable to markup on a can of beans. They aren't in the same ballpark.

Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year I was going to patent "Add to grocery cart"

Aren't groceries non-taxable in most states?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if that's true (last time I checked it was), why does TFA says it's about sales tax?

Re:Aren't groceries non-taxable in most states?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because when Amazon starts delivering groceries in a state that will require a local presence that would require Amazon to collect sales tax on every sale to anyone in that state. Under the existing rules, that would be bad for Amazon:

* They would need to collect sales tax for sales to that state
* They would need to track sales tax for all the jurisdictions in the state for their sales

Under the proposed rules:

* Amazon would need to collect sales tax for sales to that state
* Amazon would only need to track the standard "Internet" sales tax rate for their sales
* Amazon has been negotiating deals w/ governments to get a kickback on their sales tax collections

Re:I dont care who wrecks the grocery curve.

[Anonymous Coward]

you are totally clueless about the tiny margins grocery retails survive on.. small stories in small towns without much, if any, competition is one thing.. and not amazon's target here.. it's supervalu, kroger, and other major chains that operate in the largest cities in the country that will die -- and when you can't visit a retail store, compare products easily side-by-side, inspect that produce or meat, or check freshness dates for yourself.. then YOUR quality will suffer as amazon wont give a shit if you're bananas are on the verge of being banana bread ingredients, if your tomatoes, apples or other produce have bruises, or if your milk only has a day left before the use-by date.

Re:Fed Ex is non union and most drivers are not ev

[DogDude]

Exactly. That's why the service is so good from Fed Ex and why it's so shitty from UPS.

Re:Fed Ex is non union and most drivers are not ev

[Joe_Dragon]

and the drivers sends goons if you report any thing stolen

http://consumerist.com/2011/08/19/report-your-iphone-stolen-get-a-visit-from-the-fedex-thugs/

Amazon was going to be taxed anyways

[Molochi]

Amazon wants to have distribution centers in all markets with their own delivery system. The problem is, that makes them a local seller and obligates them to collect state sales tax, just like WalMart. Instituting a law that gives states the right to collect sales tax on internet sales keeps everyone else from undercutting them on price with shipped interstate sales.

Am i old for remembering this?

[tehlinux]

Would you like to have something to eat?

Taxes As A Service (TAAS)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned TAAS - taxes as a service - which could be a huge profit center for Amazon.

Amazon is setting itself up to skim profits out of the supply chain. You pay them for distribution, warehousing, and now collecting taxes. You get what's left.

I imagine they got the idea from computer consulting firms. You set up a firm, lowball work below what it would cost a company to pay employees, skim your cut off the top, and give the worker what's left.

Yes, both are loser deals for everyone but the middle man.

What about when shipping or payment changes?

[tepples]

There are systems out there for whom the developers aren't even available any longer.

Then how do the operators of these systems integrate changes to these systems to conform to updated policies of the shipping or payment provider? Do they just go out of business?

Re:What about when shipping or payment changes?

[fyngyrz]

A shipment and/or payment module can (should) be designed to be configurable. As in (simplified) "Enter shipping charges here" or "Enter phone number and handshake options for payment processor here." That doesn't mean adding a completely different module such as "collect tax for other states" or "background check on purchaser" is in any way supported or otherwise "easy."

Re:What about when shipping or payment changes?

[tepples]

Different payment gateways have different protocols. PayPal uses one. Authorize.Net uses another. Innovative Gateway uses yet another. SecurePay.com uses one compatible with Authorize.Net to ease integration with carts that support Authorize.Net, but not all gateways emulate a competitor in this way.

And you are correct that "enter shipping charges here" is way oversimplified. Shipping charge differs per country for international shipments and per postal code for domestic shipments, and a lot of shopping carts rely on a web service to compute the charges given the ship-to address, the total weight, the service level (standard, expedited, or express), and whether any items in the order contain hazardous materials. Each such service uses a different protocol.

Tax Jurisdictions of Record

[tepples]

sales tax is far far more than states, counties and cities all have their own extras.

The impression I get from the TaxCloud.net TOS is that participating states have entered applicable data for their respective counties and cities into the TaxCloud.net system:

1.11 "Tax Jurisdictions of Record" means all applicable state, county, regional, tribal, or special tax district jurisdictions for a particular TaxCloud Transaction, as determined by at least Section 309 and Section 310 of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement.

Categorization for food vs. non-food

[tepples]

To me, it appears that categorization would pose far more of a problem for grocery delivery businesses such as Amazon (which bought WebVan) than for businesses selling non-food goods, as food is far more likely to be exempt from use tax as a measure to mitigate the regressiveness of use tax. Could you give me a problem where accurate categorization of non-food goods has proven difficult?

All this is doing is requiring out-of-state business to work for free as [use] tax collectors for the state. That is just wrong.

Congress and the legislatures of the several states disagree with you that "That is just wrong", and you should express your views to you and/or vote them out of office.

Re:Categorization for food vs. non-food

[wallsg]

To me, it appears that categorization would pose far more of a problem for grocery delivery businesses such as Amazon (which bought WebVan) than for businesses selling non-food goods, as food is far more likely to be exempt from use tax as a measure to mitigate the regressiveness of use tax. Could you give me a problem where accurate categorization of non-food goods has proven difficult?

It doesn't matter that the example was food based. The still valid point is that every jurisdiction has wrinkles in their sales tax systems that makes accurate classification of every item sold in every single jurisdiction sold into difficult. A large business with a tax department or a Mom & Pop bricks & mortar store that sells in only one has a big advantage over a small internet-based business.

The associated argument that it doesn't apply to small business because of some $1,000,000 in sales exemption doesn't cut it either. If a business has a 10% net sales margin (a very high margin) then $1,000,000 in sales is $100,000 is gross profits, from which all operating expenses, loan services, inventory, etc must come.

All this is doing is requiring out-of-state business to work for free as [use] tax collectors for the state. That is just wrong.

Congress and the legislatures of the several states disagree with you that "That is just wrong", and you should express your views to you and/or vote them out of office.

Even though in essence they are collecting taxes in reality these businesses are being taxed by a jurisdiction in which they do not reside and in which they have no representation. Taxation without representation was at one point in our country's history considered a Bad Thing. Now it's OK, I guess, because Look At All Of That Money Available! In all other cases State Laws only apply inside that state's boarders (otherwise your state could arrest you for gambling if you go to a casino in Las Vegas, or for "soliciting" if you visit some places near there) but for some reason people think that this should be an exception.

Re:Categorization for food vs. non-food

[Anonymous Coward]

Congress and the legislatures of the several states disagree with you that "That is just wrong", and you should express your views to you and/or vote them out of office.

Please clarify the role of voting when all the candidates are for sale to the highest bidder, and both dominant parties have a long history of massive corruption.

Re:Categorization for food vs. non-food

[tepples]

You have representation. Your state legislature could just choose not to participate in this SSUTA program.

Re:Fed Ex is non union and most drivers are not ev

[Anonymous Coward]

I dislike UPS and FedEx equally. I hope Amazon eats their lunch and drinks their milkshake.

Re:Fed Ex is non union and most drivers are not ev

[bad-badtz-maru]

We spent months going round and round with Fedex over one of their contractors whose truck roof leaked and regularly damaged our packages going to a particular destination.

wrong Re:More regulation = less choices

[mjwalshe]

This is less regulation not more.

This on balance is a good thing it simplifies the tax code reduces red tape and cost to businesses and stops the race to the bottom where states compete to offer the lowest tax rates and supports local mom and pop businesses.