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Why Amazon Fights State Sales Tax, But Supports It Nationally
cagraham writes "The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Amazon will begin charging customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin sales tax today, after fighting against it for years. Amazon now charges sales tax in 16 states, affecting roughly 163 million Americans. Yet despite Amazon's continued fight against sales tax on the state-level, they support a Senate bill that would allow all states to tax online retailers. It seems like a contradiction, but it's actually a calculated move to undercut rivals like eBay (who would have a far harder time dealing with sales tax laws), and even an unequal playing field (many states that tax Amazon don't tax other online retailers)."
Amazon has supported a national sales tax since the late 90s. Their position hasn't changed, just people's false memories.
They don't support having to figure out 10,000 taxing jurisdictions each with their own weird rules. And there is no justification for Amazon to collect sales tax below the state level anyway, unless they are shipping to a state where they have a presence or nexus.
The supreme court has already ruled on this in 1992, and their ruling was quite clear. So either Congress gets off their butts and passes a law, or Amazon can just keep fighting it out in district courts for years.
That does not absolve people from paying use tax, which most don't. But use tax was never meant for consumers, and states have little power to enforce it on anyone except businesses. So a national sales tax makes the most sense in this case, which is why Amazon supports it.
Amazon fights local sales tax because they don't like the notion that any municipality with 3 pigs and a mayor can impose their own laws on Amazon despite Amazon having no physical presence there. If you were running a website, would you want to care about every law that some nut job five states over dreams up?
Of course Amazon did this to hurt it's competition.
Of course, but that doesn't make them wrong. Taxes should be fair. If I buy something, the tax on it shouldn't depend on who I bought it from, or where they are located. Capitalism works best when companies compete to deliver value to their customers, rather than competing to avoid taxes.