Doesn't really bother me at all, seems to me like they should have been using this money to run the schools or fund the charities.
If they have millions left over to invest than they are charging to much for services that they pretend are 'for the public good'.
We should probably go after them next.
No, I don't feel any sympathy for those who invest in plans that are obviously too good to be true, sorry if you disagree with it but I'll never feel sorry for those who miss the glaring red flags.
You lost your job because the business you worked for was ran by an idiot. Considering the way Madoff's scam worked, you weren't living off his scam, you were suffering the entire time.
I realize you feel you were ripped off, however indirectly.
The reality of it is however, if your business failed because of this, it was going to fail anyway.
When the survival of your business depends on how someone outside your organization invests your money, then you have already failed, its just a matter of when you close the doors at that point.
So let them all fail then. You're attempting to defend the banks by saying 'it would have happened to all of them'. Which I call bullshit on, but lets assume you are right.
If thats the case, and they all would have failed, then they should of. And stupid fucking people like yourself who contribute to this sort of problem should be sucked down with them.
I'd also be willing to guess the OP's idea of small and prudent is different than yours, which probably resembles something like 'the guy whos next largestest after wachovia, you know, the little one'
I don't know what world you live in, but these are EXACTLY the people you watch for these sorts of things. Some of the best, most reliable drug dealers I've known are near the top of the food chain at police departments.
The resulting fallout included death threats against the family and the closure of the 20-year-old business owned by the girl's father.
Bullshit.
Her fathers business might have closed for any number of reasons, but a MySpace posting or newspaper article copied from that posting wasn't the reason that it happened.
Sorry daddy's business failed, but it did not fail because of a news paper editorial article.
It probably failed because it wasn't run properly and this is a nice excuse to blame it on someone else and try to sue.
There is of course the possibility that what the girl said infuriated SO MANY PEOPLE that the business no longer had any customers. If thats the case, again it wasn't the newspaper article that did it, it was the girls upbringing. She obviously was too stupid to realize that posting on the Internet is not private.
The worst thing that happened here is that the newspaper reprinted something and lied about the intention of the article, but thats as far as it goes. They didn't post anything that wasn't already public knowledge.
The newspaper didn't ruin daddy's business, mommy and daddy did when they raised a douche bag daughter. Of course, this is to be expected as apparently none of them are willing to take responsibility and accept that their own actions directly resulted in the consequences they want to blame the newspaper for.
The newspaper should have properly attributed the work, or for their online version, link to it directly. I understand the problem with printing a link to a website in a printed newspaper, so I can understand copying it for reference, it was after all a public document that anyone could see anyway. IANAL but I believe this actually falls under fair use when done with proper attribution.
The judge in this case should throw any one involved in the court case in jail for wasting tax payer money and court time while this family tries to punish everyone else and not take responsibility for their own actions. Forced labor, since otherwise we're just wasting more money holding them when they should be contributing back to the world. Hrm, the more I think about it the more I think daddy's business was probably doomed from day one. With no sense of responsibility its going to be pretty hard to have a successful business.
I'd like to add to the previous post that in this particular case, with the state of north carolina, you can look up addresses online, via one of the state websites and find out what city/county any address (state recognized) is in for most of the state. Not all counties are on the state wide system yet, almost all have their one websites with the information, only a few are not currently available to the general public online.
So again, really, this is a fucking trivial issue when you're talking about using computers to address it.
If you'd like, I can open my copy of QuickBooks and tell you, but I'm guessing you just didn't realize that this trivial problem was solved years ago and is as simple as buying just about any accounting software package known to man and keeping the tax tables up to date yearly.
Amazon would have to go to North Carolina and find constituents to "boycott" NC.
Uhm, not ship any product to NC. If you get to the checkout page on an Amazon order and try to buy from NC than say 'we're not selling to NC because we don't like this law!'.
THAT would be Amazon making a stand. But they aren't going to give up those sales, are they? No, of course not, cause they don't actually care THAT much, they just want to make a scene and get people going.
Yes. This is business. If theres a thorn in your side, you remove it. You're not going to miss the thorn. Also, if you leave the thorn there, its going to get much, much worse. On top of that, undoubtedly its going to increase costs and there will be loss of business for Amazon. They are not going to be able to come out of this unscathed.
And the goverment is a business too, and in this case, Amazon is the thorn in the side, which is lowering the state tax revenue, which in directly means that I get less benefits in my community because of Amazon. Forgive me if I'm not in a big hurry to suck them off for contributing to the degradation of my community.
What is amazon going to pay? Are you refering to the new line item on during your amazon checkout that says 'NC State Sales Tax'? Which they of course pass along directly to the consumer like every other business does? They aren't paying for shit, they just pass it on to you and I.
Amazon is just saying 'well, if your going to tax us, we're not going to play nice and share with your businesses!'
But thats okay, once people realize that the actual price of buying from Amazon is about the same as buying local than people will just buy local and the problem is solved. NC legislature accomplishes its goal and gets business back in the state. But thats not what will happen, because even after people seeing the taxes at the time of sale, Amazon is STILL going to be cheaper in many cases, so guess what, they AREN'T EVEN GOING TO LOSE SALES. And... the NC legislature STILL wins because they've made up for the tax income that is no longer provided by local businesses. Either way, the NC state politicians have managed to remove the thorn in their side, and Amazon is still just a bunch of spoiled brat douchebags.
Unfortunately, this is how things work. Personally, I wouldn't want it any other way. If Amazon doesn't do this, then we are looking at the beginning of paying local taxes for online purchases. This is the only major draw for the consumer, because its a bit riskier, especially for larger purchases (tougher to return).
And there in lies the problem. You just don't want to pay any taxes and you still want all the services that are provided to you by your local and state governments. You are completely shortsighted and self absorbed. When you do all of your business via mail order, and pay no taxes, what happens to your state and municipal government then?
Did you ever think about that, or were you too caught up in the idea that your tax free shopping loophole was going away?
NC has no right to levy taxes against goods sold in its state? I'm sorry, what planet do you live on?
Has no state learned California's lesson?
What lesson is that? That if you enact laws to protect your environment and control companies who could give a flying fuck about you that those companies will indeed continue to sell products in your state and that people will indeed still want to move there at a ridiculous rate?
I pray to god our legislature takes the lesson California got.
North Carolina gets the right to tax the goods the very instant they enter the state. If you don't want to pay the NC state tax, don't enter the state. Its that simple. But Amazon is still going to happily sell to the state regardless of the taxing involved because its far more profitable to sell and pay the taxes than not sell at all. Its really not rocket science to see who the clear winner is in this battle. Its also fairly clear that Amazon is just acting like a bunch of dicks because it doesn't want to have to pay the cost of doing business in NC. The cost isn't the tax, which will just be passed directly to the consumer. The cost is simply making their system capable of dealing with... tax tables... Which, QuickBooks does, so I'm pretty sure Amazon can handle it. If not, I really don't want them doing business in my state anyway, they'll probably fuck up the rest of my order too if they think its hard to calculate, accrue and account for sales tax. Funny how walmart.com has no problem doing the work.
You'll just have a new line below your subtotal that says 'NC State Sales Tax'. You know, just like every other transaction in NC has.
Guess what, I already AM required to do that! NC already requires me to pay sales tax on items purchased out of state via mail order.
So now the difference is simply that if Amazon wants to do business in NC, then it is responsible for collecting those taxes and paying them to the appropriate office.
The price doesn't change at all. To anyone, just who is responsible for dealing with it.
So lets see, do I want my state trying to deal with tax submissions from all of its residents in 18 different ways, enforcing those collections and all the other management that goes with it. No, I'd be much fucking happer to have the storefront do it. Just like every other person who sells in NC does.
So you think Amazon has the 'right' to sell in North Carolina, but none of the 'responsibilities'?
I'm not aware of any clear minded sane person who would ever, for even an instant, think that any 'right' comes with 0 'responsibility'. There are people that think that way, we call them spoiled brats here.
They only need the address of the affiliate, that makes it far simpler.
We have these things, called computers, that are abso-fucking-lutely awesome when dealing with numbers and table look ups and mundane repeated calculations.
Amazon has this massive cluster of computing power that they have SO MUCH SPARE they sell the extra for profit. But they don't have the software or processing power to basically due what ever dumb POS system and mechanical cash register have done for god knows how long?
I know this is going to sound amazing, but at one point in time, people calculated taxes.... IN THEIR HEAD...
Yes there is a lot of volume, but guess what, thats what Amazon is ALL about, doing business in volume.
If every other business in the world is capable of dealing with these issues it seems a little odd that Amazon can't, considering who they are and what they do, its mind boggling that anyone could argue 'its hard', which is really all this is.
Yea, its fucking horrible that the people of California were too stupid to want to clean up their disgusting environment on their own so their government had to have the foresight to protect them from their own ignorance.
I think its absolutely horrible that the state government stepped in and did something about a problem that everyone now recognizes as a problem.
Disclaimer 1: I don't sell on Amazon and think this is utter bullshit and pure evil. I also don't buy from Amazon because, again they are pure evil so I'm obviously biased. Disclaimer 2: Despite disclaimer 1, I can still safely say, you are an idiot, and its a damn good thing the California government is protecting you otherwise I'm pretty sure your contributions to the gene pool would end on their own sooner rather than later.
Oh no... I can't buy from Amazon... and there isn't any other business in my state that I can buy from like Amazon... none at all...
Of course, there are thousands of businesses in the state that offer, guess what, everything that Amazon does.
So Amazon moves to another country, won't happen any time soon, but lets just pretend it does. How long do you think its going to be before there are taxes in other countries to deal with this sort of thing... oh wait, what ? There already are other countries with taxes that deal with this sort of thing? You're kidding, and you mean countries other than the US tax goods coming into their country? You've got to be kidding me?!!?!?!?!
Unless you lie, you're already paying tax when items come into your country from others. You're probably just completely ignorant of the fact that you owe taxes on items purchased out of your country, but you most certainly DO owe them in the case of almost EVERY purchase you can possibly make outside your country.
Its easy to say 'haha look at the US, stupid slobs' when you're just completely ignorant of your own laws. Twit.
Right, Amazon will continue this practice if the law passes... they'll give up income because they have to pay tax on it...
Are you fucking kidding?
Whats better:
Make $0 and not have to pay anything.
Or
Make $200,000,000 and pay $100,000 to the state.
I'm not Amazon, but I'm pretty sure I'd go ahead and take that extra $199,900,000 and move on, even if it costs me an extra $100,000 the first year to make my shitty accounting system do it. Of course, if their accounting system can't handle it, I suggest using QuickBooks, which interestingly enough seems to have no problem dealing with taxation in North Carolina, as well as every other state in the union. Seems odd that a global retailer couldn't deal with it.
Guess we're just going to have to switch to a federal sales tax that gets distributed to the states.
The states can not afford to lose taxes from the people who get cut off.
Sure they can. People will buy locally and pay taxes, no loss to the state in any way, and it actually does promote businesses IN the community. On the other hand, Amazon loses all revenue possible from that avenue.
How are they helping the community exactly? By helping to ensure that sales normally made in the community that would have been taxed and provided benifits to the community can now be made outside the community with absolutely none of it going to anyone in the state with the tiny exception of the shipper?
Lets pretend every purchase is made online, and businesses set themselves up to only sale to people in other states, hence never have to collect sales tax. Lets just pretend, for the moment, that we end up making EVERY purchase this way. So who is going to pay for all the things that those state sales taxes once funded now?
Do you think the money will come from thin air?
So no money, no services... thanks, I appreciate the help they provided my community. I'm glad we no longer build any improvements or provide services like public health to our residents, you are totally right, the state is much better now...
Fortunately, we don't live in that dream world.
Also, the tax is on the money amazon gives to NC affiliates for refering the sale, NOT on the total of the sale. Residents of NC are responsible for paying sales tax on the total sales price themselves.
Everyone on slashdot is all up in arms about how its double taxation and unfair, and yet none of you have the slightest fucking clue how the bill is even currently considered being written.
Whats more, it isn't even finailize and ready to vote on yet, you don't ACTUALLY know how its going to end up.
So you're not only wrong in reality, you aren't even right about it in theory.
Go news for nerds! Stuff that matters, but not enough to know have the actual facts about it!
Wrong. You aren't taxing them 3 times, you are taxing them once on the affiliate transaction.
Amazon doesn't tax the people.
You don't make the sale, you refer them to Amazon who makes the sale.
The tax is on the revenue presented back to the affiliate.
The store in NC isn't being taxed on the $90 that amazon made, its being taxed on the $0.25 that amazon gave them for refering the sale.
I've worked for businesses that didn't pay taxes for years due to their poor performance. Yes you still have to pay payroll taxes and other employement related things, but thats completely seperate from sales tax isn't it.
Besides, jackass, its not like you pay the sales tax, you fucking charge it directly to the customers anyway. You aren't losing money, you're passing it through. It was never part of your profit anyway, stop acting like they were taking something from you douchebag, it wasn't yours to begin with.
If you make that little amount of money than you are a twit for reporting it as a small business.
There comes a point where its not worth it to call it a 'business' you just call it 'income'.
Unless you're trying to use it to take advantage of some tax loophole. And well, if you're trying to use a 'business' to take advantage of a tax loophole for some reason than you can stop your bitching and deal with the fact that using that loophole requires you to have a clue about filing your taxes or hire someone who does.
I don't bake my own bread because the WORST crap I can buy is STILL better than what I bake, maybe you need to talk to someone with a clue about running a business instead of bitching about problems you run into because you don't know how.
Yes, but how far did you underestimate your GROSS and why did you not think to adjust your payment schedule during the year.
Businesses are SUPPOSED to do their taxes every quarter, you mean you didn't realize you under-estimated at any point before the final payment?
I run a business myself, in NC and the solution is really simple. ACCOUNTANT. If you do enough business that your taxes are hard then you really can afford to hire an accountant. They really aren't that expensive you when you realize how much they offload.
The overhead of tracking tax codes down to the city level (and keeping up to date) would be overwhelming. The only winning move in this case really is not to play and that's what Amazon did.
McDonalds and Walmart both seem to do it pretty well in coping with interstate, even global tax issues, not exactly sure why I company built on powerful computing technology should find it more difficult than a burger joint.
They can sell processing time on their massive under utilized computing clusters, but they can't calculate and accrue sales tax for customers they have an address for?
Wheres the punchline for your joke, I'm afraid I missed it somewhere?
So just curious, as more and more companies do like Amazon and more and more purchases are made from out of state due to this sort of web service...
What do you think states should do to deal with the lost revenue.
Amazon seems to have no problem taking money from people in North Carolina. I don't see them paying their own state any taxes on those sales.
Its not like they don't just pass sales tax along to the customer like every other business ANYWAY.
Its not like Amazon itself is paying the taxes to NC.
Don't feed me some bullshit about how their system doesn't support it and how expensive it would be to add, if QuickBooks can deal with mutlistate taxes its your own damn fault for buying/creating something for a company the size of Amazon that can deal with global accounting.
So when your state ends up with no instate businesses, so theres no more sales tax, and suddenly you have no money to fund all the shit that you take advantage of on a daily basis, then what? When you start losing city services that these taxes subsidize... now what?
Its nice to rant and rave about how evil taxes are, but you're tone will change the instant you lose some precious amenity that you probably think of as a god given right.
Not just screwing the little guy? Are you kidding?
What do you think the ratio of affiliate sales is to direct sales for Amazon? Its not like the total affiliate program is even their prime source of revenue, one state in one country probably won't even show up on the books in any noticable way.
Don't see them stopping their own sales in NC do you? I wonder why that is, if they feel so strongly about it.
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So you are a closet case democrat/hypocrit?
Doesn't really bother me at all, seems to me like they should have been using this money to run the schools or fund the charities.
If they have millions left over to invest than they are charging to much for services that they pretend are 'for the public good'.
We should probably go after them next.
No, I don't feel any sympathy for those who invest in plans that are obviously too good to be true, sorry if you disagree with it but I'll never feel sorry for those who miss the glaring red flags.
You lost your job because the business you worked for was ran by an idiot. Considering the way Madoff's scam worked, you weren't living off his scam, you were suffering the entire time.
I realize you feel you were ripped off, however indirectly.
The reality of it is however, if your business failed because of this, it was going to fail anyway.
When the survival of your business depends on how someone outside your organization invests your money, then you have already failed, its just a matter of when you close the doors at that point.
So let them all fail then. You're attempting to defend the banks by saying 'it would have happened to all of them'. Which I call bullshit on, but lets assume you are right.
If thats the case, and they all would have failed, then they should of. And stupid fucking people like yourself who contribute to this sort of problem should be sucked down with them.
I'd also be willing to guess the OP's idea of small and prudent is different than yours, which probably resembles something like 'the guy whos next largestest after wachovia, you know, the little one'
I don't know what world you live in, but these are EXACTLY the people you watch for these sorts of things. Some of the best, most reliable drug dealers I've known are near the top of the food chain at police departments.
Bullshit.
Her fathers business might have closed for any number of reasons, but a MySpace posting or newspaper article copied from that posting wasn't the reason that it happened.
Sorry daddy's business failed, but it did not fail because of a news paper editorial article.
It probably failed because it wasn't run properly and this is a nice excuse to blame it on someone else and try to sue.
There is of course the possibility that what the girl said infuriated SO MANY PEOPLE that the business no longer had any customers. If thats the case, again it wasn't the newspaper article that did it, it was the girls upbringing. She obviously was too stupid to realize that posting on the Internet is not private.
The worst thing that happened here is that the newspaper reprinted something and lied about the intention of the article, but thats as far as it goes. They didn't post anything that wasn't already public knowledge.
The newspaper didn't ruin daddy's business, mommy and daddy did when they raised a douche bag daughter. Of course, this is to be expected as apparently none of them are willing to take responsibility and accept that their own actions directly resulted in the consequences they want to blame the newspaper for.
The newspaper should have properly attributed the work, or for their online version, link to it directly. I understand the problem with printing a link to a website in a printed newspaper, so I can understand copying it for reference, it was after all a public document that anyone could see anyway. IANAL but I believe this actually falls under fair use when done with proper attribution.
The judge in this case should throw any one involved in the court case in jail for wasting tax payer money and court time while this family tries to punish everyone else and not take responsibility for their own actions. Forced labor, since otherwise we're just wasting more money holding them when they should be contributing back to the world. Hrm, the more I think about it the more I think daddy's business was probably doomed from day one. With no sense of responsibility its going to be pretty hard to have a successful business.
I'd like to add to the previous post that in this particular case, with the state of north carolina, you can look up addresses online, via one of the state websites and find out what city/county any address (state recognized) is in for most of the state. Not all counties are on the state wide system yet, almost all have their one websites with the information, only a few are not currently available to the general public online.
So again, really, this is a fucking trivial issue when you're talking about using computers to address it.
If you'd like, I can open my copy of QuickBooks and tell you, but I'm guessing you just didn't realize that this trivial problem was solved years ago and is as simple as buying just about any accounting software package known to man and keeping the tax tables up to date yearly.
Uhm, not ship any product to NC. If you get to the checkout page on an Amazon order and try to buy from NC than say 'we're not selling to NC because we don't like this law!'.
THAT would be Amazon making a stand. But they aren't going to give up those sales, are they? No, of course not, cause they don't actually care THAT much, they just want to make a scene and get people going.
And the goverment is a business too, and in this case, Amazon is the thorn in the side, which is lowering the state tax revenue, which in directly means that I get less benefits in my community because of Amazon. Forgive me if I'm not in a big hurry to suck them off for contributing to the degradation of my community.
What is amazon going to pay? Are you refering to the new line item on during your amazon checkout that says 'NC State Sales Tax'? Which they of course pass along directly to the consumer like every other business does? They aren't paying for shit, they just pass it on to you and I.
Amazon is just saying 'well, if your going to tax us, we're not going to play nice and share with your businesses!'
But thats okay, once people realize that the actual price of buying from Amazon is about the same as buying local than people will just buy local and the problem is solved. NC legislature accomplishes its goal and gets business back in the state. But thats not what will happen, because even after people seeing the taxes at the time of sale, Amazon is STILL going to be cheaper in many cases, so guess what, they AREN'T EVEN GOING TO LOSE SALES. And ... the NC legislature STILL wins because they've made up for the tax income that is no longer provided by local businesses. Either way, the NC state politicians have managed to remove the thorn in their side, and Amazon is still just a bunch of spoiled brat douchebags.
And there in lies the problem. You just don't want to pay any taxes and you still want all the services that are provided to you by your local and state governments. You are completely shortsighted and self absorbed. When you do all of your business via mail order, and pay no taxes, what happens to your state and municipal government then?
Did you ever think about that, or were you too caught up in the idea that your tax free shopping loophole was going away?
WTF?
NC has no right to levy taxes against goods sold in its state? I'm sorry, what planet do you live on?
What lesson is that? That if you enact laws to protect your environment and control companies who could give a flying fuck about you that those companies will indeed continue to sell products in your state and that people will indeed still want to move there at a ridiculous rate?
I pray to god our legislature takes the lesson California got.
North Carolina gets the right to tax the goods the very instant they enter the state. If you don't want to pay the NC state tax, don't enter the state. Its that simple. But Amazon is still going to happily sell to the state regardless of the taxing involved because its far more profitable to sell and pay the taxes than not sell at all. Its really not rocket science to see who the clear winner is in this battle. Its also fairly clear that Amazon is just acting like a bunch of dicks because it doesn't want to have to pay the cost of doing business in NC. The cost isn't the tax, which will just be passed directly to the consumer. The cost is simply making their system capable of dealing with ... tax tables ... Which, QuickBooks does, so I'm pretty sure Amazon can handle it. If not, I really don't want them doing business in my state anyway, they'll probably fuck up the rest of my order too if they think its hard to calculate, accrue and account for sales tax. Funny how walmart.com has no problem doing the work.
But Amazon won't pay those taxes.
I will, as an NC resident.
Amazon won't take the hit for any tax, ever.
You'll just have a new line below your subtotal that says 'NC State Sales Tax'. You know, just like every other transaction in NC has.
Guess what, I already AM required to do that! NC already requires me to pay sales tax on items purchased out of state via mail order.
So now the difference is simply that if Amazon wants to do business in NC, then it is responsible for collecting those taxes and paying them to the appropriate office.
The price doesn't change at all. To anyone, just who is responsible for dealing with it.
So lets see, do I want my state trying to deal with tax submissions from all of its residents in 18 different ways, enforcing those collections and all the other management that goes with it. No, I'd be much fucking happer to have the storefront do it. Just like every other person who sells in NC does.
So you think Amazon has the 'right' to sell in North Carolina, but none of the 'responsibilities'?
I'm not aware of any clear minded sane person who would ever, for even an instant, think that any 'right' comes with 0 'responsibility'. There are people that think that way, we call them spoiled brats here.
Then why does Walmart have no problem with it?
They only need the address of the affiliate, that makes it far simpler.
We have these things, called computers, that are abso-fucking-lutely awesome when dealing with numbers and table look ups and mundane repeated calculations.
Amazon has this massive cluster of computing power that they have SO MUCH SPARE they sell the extra for profit. But they don't have the software or processing power to basically due what ever dumb POS system and mechanical cash register have done for god knows how long?
I know this is going to sound amazing, but at one point in time, people calculated taxes .... IN THEIR HEAD ...
Yes there is a lot of volume, but guess what, thats what Amazon is ALL about, doing business in volume.
If every other business in the world is capable of dealing with these issues it seems a little odd that Amazon can't, considering who they are and what they do, its mind boggling that anyone could argue 'its hard', which is really all this is.
Yea, its fucking horrible that the people of California were too stupid to want to clean up their disgusting environment on their own so their government had to have the foresight to protect them from their own ignorance.
I think its absolutely horrible that the state government stepped in and did something about a problem that everyone now recognizes as a problem.
Disclaimer 1: I don't sell on Amazon and think this is utter bullshit and pure evil. I also don't buy from Amazon because, again they are pure evil so I'm obviously biased.
Disclaimer 2: Despite disclaimer 1, I can still safely say, you are an idiot, and its a damn good thing the California government is protecting you otherwise I'm pretty sure your contributions to the gene pool would end on their own sooner rather than later.
No real lose than is there to anyone is it?
Oh no... I can't buy from Amazon ... and there isn't any other business in my state that I can buy from like Amazon ... none at all ...
Of course, there are thousands of businesses in the state that offer, guess what, everything that Amazon does.
So Amazon moves to another country, won't happen any time soon, but lets just pretend it does. How long do you think its going to be before there are taxes in other countries to deal with this sort of thing ... oh wait, what ? There already are other countries with taxes that deal with this sort of thing? You're kidding, and you mean countries other than the US tax goods coming into their country? You've got to be kidding me?!!?!?!?!
Unless you lie, you're already paying tax when items come into your country from others. You're probably just completely ignorant of the fact that you owe taxes on items purchased out of your country, but you most certainly DO owe them in the case of almost EVERY purchase you can possibly make outside your country.
Its easy to say 'haha look at the US, stupid slobs' when you're just completely ignorant of your own laws. Twit.
Right, Amazon will continue this practice if the law passes ... they'll give up income because they have to pay tax on it ...
Are you fucking kidding?
Whats better:
Make $0 and not have to pay anything.
Or
Make $200,000,000 and pay $100,000 to the state.
I'm not Amazon, but I'm pretty sure I'd go ahead and take that extra $199,900,000 and move on, even if it costs me an extra $100,000 the first year to make my shitty accounting system do it. Of course, if their accounting system can't handle it, I suggest using QuickBooks, which interestingly enough seems to have no problem dealing with taxation in North Carolina, as well as every other state in the union. Seems odd that a global retailer couldn't deal with it.
Guess we're just going to have to switch to a federal sales tax that gets distributed to the states.
Sure they can. People will buy locally and pay taxes, no loss to the state in any way, and it actually does promote businesses IN the community. On the other hand, Amazon loses all revenue possible from that avenue.
I'm sorry, who was the loser again?
Why do we call Microsoft evil then exactly?
How are they helping the community exactly? By helping to ensure that sales normally made in the community that would have been taxed and provided benifits to the community can now be made outside the community with absolutely none of it going to anyone in the state with the tiny exception of the shipper?
Lets pretend every purchase is made online, and businesses set themselves up to only sale to people in other states, hence never have to collect sales tax. Lets just pretend, for the moment, that we end up making EVERY purchase this way. So who is going to pay for all the things that those state sales taxes once funded now?
Do you think the money will come from thin air?
So no money, no services ... thanks, I appreciate the help they provided my community. I'm glad we no longer build any improvements or provide services like public health to our residents, you are totally right, the state is much better now ...
Fortunately, we don't live in that dream world.
Also, the tax is on the money amazon gives to NC affiliates for refering the sale, NOT on the total of the sale. Residents of NC are responsible for paying sales tax on the total sales price themselves.
Everyone on slashdot is all up in arms about how its double taxation and unfair, and yet none of you have the slightest fucking clue how the bill is even currently considered being written.
Whats more, it isn't even finailize and ready to vote on yet, you don't ACTUALLY know how its going to end up.
So you're not only wrong in reality, you aren't even right about it in theory.
Go news for nerds! Stuff that matters, but not enough to know have the actual facts about it!
Just curious, which part of which constitution is it that you think says anything that prevents taxation of interstate commerce.
I keep hearing unconstitutional, and I keep thinking what country do these people live in?
Wrong. You aren't taxing them 3 times, you are taxing them once on the affiliate transaction.
Amazon doesn't tax the people.
You don't make the sale, you refer them to Amazon who makes the sale.
The tax is on the revenue presented back to the affiliate.
The store in NC isn't being taxed on the $90 that amazon made, its being taxed on the $0.25 that amazon gave them for refering the sale.
I've worked for businesses that didn't pay taxes for years due to their poor performance. Yes you still have to pay payroll taxes and other employement related things, but thats completely seperate from sales tax isn't it.
Besides, jackass, its not like you pay the sales tax, you fucking charge it directly to the customers anyway. You aren't losing money, you're passing it through. It was never part of your profit anyway, stop acting like they were taking something from you douchebag, it wasn't yours to begin with.
If you make that little amount of money than you are a twit for reporting it as a small business.
There comes a point where its not worth it to call it a 'business' you just call it 'income'.
Unless you're trying to use it to take advantage of some tax loophole. And well, if you're trying to use a 'business' to take advantage of a tax loophole for some reason than you can stop your bitching and deal with the fact that using that loophole requires you to have a clue about filing your taxes or hire someone who does.
I don't bake my own bread because the WORST crap I can buy is STILL better than what I bake, maybe you need to talk to someone with a clue about running a business instead of bitching about problems you run into because you don't know how.
Yes, but how far did you underestimate your GROSS and why did you not think to adjust your payment schedule during the year.
Businesses are SUPPOSED to do their taxes every quarter, you mean you didn't realize you under-estimated at any point before the final payment?
I run a business myself, in NC and the solution is really simple. ACCOUNTANT. If you do enough business that your taxes are hard then you really can afford to hire an accountant. They really aren't that expensive you when you realize how much they offload.
McDonalds and Walmart both seem to do it pretty well in coping with interstate, even global tax issues, not exactly sure why I company built on powerful computing technology should find it more difficult than a burger joint.
They can sell processing time on their massive under utilized computing clusters, but they can't calculate and accrue sales tax for customers they have an address for?
Wheres the punchline for your joke, I'm afraid I missed it somewhere?
Or they could just go away as they are rather useless anyway.
So just curious, as more and more companies do like Amazon and more and more purchases are made from out of state due to this sort of web service ...
What do you think states should do to deal with the lost revenue.
Amazon seems to have no problem taking money from people in North Carolina. I don't see them paying their own state any taxes on those sales.
Its not like they don't just pass sales tax along to the customer like every other business ANYWAY.
Its not like Amazon itself is paying the taxes to NC.
Don't feed me some bullshit about how their system doesn't support it and how expensive it would be to add, if QuickBooks can deal with mutlistate taxes its your own damn fault for buying/creating something for a company the size of Amazon that can deal with global accounting.
So when your state ends up with no instate businesses, so theres no more sales tax, and suddenly you have no money to fund all the shit that you take advantage of on a daily basis, then what? When you start losing city services that these taxes subsidize ... now what?
Its nice to rant and rave about how evil taxes are, but you're tone will change the instant you lose some precious amenity that you probably think of as a god given right.
Not just screwing the little guy? Are you kidding?
What do you think the ratio of affiliate sales is to direct sales for Amazon? Its not like the total affiliate program is even their prime source of revenue, one state in one country probably won't even show up on the books in any noticable way.
Don't see them stopping their own sales in NC do you? I wonder why that is, if they feel so strongly about it.