Amazon strikes back at "internet tax"

[dialog_gvf]

The law, as written, is just a bad law. And it would set a dangerous precedent. Not because New York State shouldn’t try to collect the $50 million in estimated uncollectetd (sic) sales taxes owed to it. But because the law is tortuous in the way it attempts to do that.

This still leaves the question of who should be collecting state sales taxes on online purchases. On that matter, I’m on New York’s side that it should be Amazon. It knows what state its customers reside in since it has their credit card information and is shipping goods to them. How hard would it be for Amazon to add a sales tax calculator to its checkout cart that calculates a different sales tax depending on the state of the purchaser? The answer is that it wouldn’t be hard at all, but that Amazon doesn’t want to do it because every additional surcharge at checkout results in more abandoned carts due to last-minute sticker shock.

So, how much will it cost Amazon and all other online retailers to make changes to their cart software?

Oh, and does NY want the money sent to them? How does that happen? Magic? No, that happens by changes to accounting (more costs). Accountants managing the process. Complicating the books and their tax returns. And someone needs to actually send the money to NY state every quarter.

How much will it cost the vendors to do NY state's collection job for them?

Now, imagine this catches on and you're an online vendor suddenly having to account for and remit to 50 different states every month or quarter.

And how much will the governments spend to deal with possibly tens of thousands of these new sales tax remissions? No doubt they'll pat themselves on the back for creating more civil service jobs.

Gary