I am against taxes, but I have to to note that the bill levels the playing field because small business owners were at a disadvantage compared to amazon.
Well gee, ain’t it grand? We get to pay more to the state government than we already do. And the Republicans in the house and senators like Enzi helped them screw us some more.
I’m in a state supposedly run by Republicans. They will gladly take any tax the feds tell them is available and go back to mouthing their anti-tax lies.
I sympathize with smaller sellers, and I try to support my own local businesses whenever possible, but when money’s tight, what are you going to do? I went to a local auto supply and paid $36 plus tax for two windshield wipers I could have bought from Amazon for $20, tax free, shipped free in 2 days—and often they ship it overnight for free.
But I know this can’t last for Amazon. They see the future, and it’s endless litigation with tax-hungry states. I guess they feel they need to bite the bullet and roll with the punches.
There already is a level playing field.
Online, you pay shipping charges but not sales tax.
In a bricks-and-mortar store, you pay sales tax but not shipping charges.
I live in a rural area of Maine, and some items simply cannot be purchased locally.....the small business owners usually do not have the item I’m looking for.
Then there are the antiques and vintage items sold on eBay and other web sites. Some of these items are rare and, in other cases, one of a kind.
Amazon should tread carefully lest they kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Actually, the absence of sales taxes online protected brick and mortars from even more drastic sales taxes and regulation. It is only in being able to escape onerous taxes that taxes are restrained.
It is no coincidence that the 16th Amendment passed only after Arizona became a state. That left Americans with no where to run.
Actually, the little guys fly under the radar. They can fill all of the out of state orders they can get without worrying about whether they have a nexus
in any of the states except their own. But being huge and wanting to build an efficient nation-wide distribution network, Amazon increasingly loses that luxury. They are the target of all those parasitic state governments. And now that those states are leaning heavily on Amazon, Amazon wants to level the playing field by screwing the little guys as well.
No big deal, except I buy stuff from those little guys ...
This does NOT “level the playing field”.
For every transaction, Amazon pays the lowest credit card processing fee of any large online retailer. And they do it all in house, do it so well they sell credit card processing services to tens of thousands of their suppliers, merchants and competitors.
Enforcing sales tax nationwide will make PayPal and Amazon credit card processing services a absolute requirement that will permit Amazon to increase the transactional costs of all online transactions.
Amazon in effect will gain something like 0.01% of all online transactions that go through their new Amazon/Paypal/National Sales Tax Payment Processing Service solution.
10,000+ taxing authorities in the USA. Only the largest credit card and merchant processing services will be able to comply, Amazon hopes to cut out some of the smaller competitors to PayPal in the long term.
the USA has about 43,000 zip codes.
The USA has about 11,000 taxing authories.
There are companies that compile sales tax by zip code. Such as this one:
http://www.zip2tax.com/z2t_lookup.asp?inputZip=35201
Amazon hopes to merge this information with their credit card processing services and PayPal services to increase their total market share and to increase their revenues from those business units.
It’s that simple.
The link above is to Birmingham AL, the highest tax city in the USA.
So you want to be a small business owner having to deal with sales taxes from all “57” states?
I am against taxes, but I have to to note that the bill levels the playing field because buggy whip makers were at a disadvantage compared to internal combustion vehicles.
“small business owners were at a disadvantage” I see, so
instead of getting rid of the tax to level the playing
field we should violate the constitution and make everyone
pay taxes across state lines. Which state tax do we pay? The state of purchase or the state of sales or both. Soon there will be a “State of Manufacture sales Tax” along with a tax from every state the product was shipped over. Foot in the
door. Who said small business owners couldn’t sell their
goods too someone in another state? I think Amazon should
fight this straight up to the USSP. By the way, your right.
You are completely wrong. I am a small business owner and not only can I sell on the internet via my own website, I can also sell on Amazon, eBay, Overstock, Etsy, Craigslist, Google shopping, etc.
I have both a brick and mortar store and an online presence on multiple venues. The playing field is already level.
Who is going to collect these new sales taxes, and what will the rate be? I oppose putting onerous regulations on small businesses if they have to start filing extra forms or file taxes in new jurisdictions without some offset. Even if you only have to pay your home state sales tax, states like California with 9.5% rate are doubly screwed compared to other states with half that rate - though I agree only Calfornians are to blame for it.