Your reasoning is flawed, and therefore your conclusion is unpersuasive.
You make the mistake many do, of failing to understand what California, and other states, are actually proposing.
There is no “tax” on Amazon. There is no “Tax” associated with shipping things across state lines.
There is a “Sales Tax”, a tax that a state is legally allowed to apply to it’s own residents for things they purchase. There has long been sales tax in California, on items purchased by Californians — Including items that were purchased over the internet.
The issue here is whether Amazon, a company selling items to people in California, can be required to collect Sales Tax for California. Companies that have business interests within a state (a “nexus”) can be required to collect sales tax for the state as a cost of doing business.
And when they buy something from a company that has NO business in the state, they STILL have to pay sales tax — but the purchasers have to track it, and pay it directly. IT’s the law, and anybody who doesn’t pay tax on what they buy over the internet is a TAX CHEATER.
But, Amazon does have business interests in the state. Amazon has argued that those interested do not rise to the level where they should collect sales tax from their customers. California is arguing that it can.
Amazon is fighting this because Amazon like tax cheaters, and makes money by enabling people to cheat on their taxes, and thus undercutting businesses who have to collect the sale taxes.
It is surprising how many good conservatives just don’t know that they are required by state law to pay the sales tax themselves if a company doesn’t collect it for them. And then they find out, they make all these excuses about why they should be allowed to cheat on their taxes.
Nothing at all wrong with my reasoning.
Question:
Did the article we are talking about come in to this state from another state?
If the answer is “yes” then “NO TAX OR DUTY SHALL BE LAID...”
Now you can twist words to make the meaning whatever you want. You could call it a tax on breathing while you are going to the post office to pick up your package.
But the law is supposed to look at the SUBSTANCE of things, not the form or description or title.
Legally, it is a use tax, not a "sales tax." Your reasoning is flawed, and therefore your conclusion is unpersuasive.
Partially true, but not entirely true. First, merely because you purchase something over the internet from a business that has not contacts with your state of residence - and thus cannot be forced to collect your state’s sales or use tax from you - does not, ipso facto, make you a tax cheat.
As a general matter, if you bring something into the state on which state sales tax has not been paid, then you owe the compensating use tax. So far, so good.
However, it is difficult to track all of those purchases, particularly for people who live near populated border areas. Thus, e.g., states like NY have come up with a simple solution - you either report, and pay use tax, on your actual untaxes purchases, or else you pay a proxy “use” tax computed as a percentage of your income.
That proxy may, or may not, be a reasonably accurate measure of what your actual use tax liability would be; however, once paid, you are, ipso facto, not a tax cheat, regardless of whether or not you actually paid use tax on your actual purchases. Of course, that creates an interesting market distortion because it incentivizes middle and lower income folks to buy as much as possible over the internet from companies that have no presence in NYS because their effective sales tax costs will be substantially lower than if they had purchased from companies with a presence in NYS.
About twenty years ago, I was schooled in just how far-reaching CA sales tax is. We had sold product to the City of Los Angeles and charged them sales tax, as required. LA did not pay stating they were tax exempt.
Long and short of it, we got fined for not collecting the sales tax that LA would not pay and a whole lot of paperwork got dumped in my lap. The next time LA ordered product, I had to call the City Comptroller and inform them that I could not ship them any product until they made their account current. Since it was filtration product for their water system, they had no choice but to comply.
Incorrect. They try to tell you that, or actually they tacitly admit they lack the authority to apply sales tax to those goods when they try to hide what it is behind the deceptive name "use tax". But it's exactly the same amount applied to the same goods and only when sales tax is not applied. It is a sales tax, but it's unConstitutional. If it weren't, they wouldn't even go to the effort of trying to fool you with the pretense.