Free Republic

Amazon is gauging how employees feel about moving away from the company's Seattle campus, largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic and Seattle’s new payroll tax. Amazon sent an email to workers asking if they’d be willing to work in Seattle’s suburbs and outlying areas, including Redmond and Tacoma. The story was reported by Bloomberg on Friday. **SNIP** Amazon employs about 50,000 workers at its Seattle headquarters, which includes more than 40 buildings - including the company’s landmark, greenhouse-like glass Spheres - sprawling across several blocks. **SNIP** Amazon has had a rocky relationship with the Seattle City Council since at least...

U.S. states could collect millions of dollars in online sales taxes, with members of both parties in Congress sponsoring legislation Thursday that would resolve states' decades-long struggle to tax businesses beyond their borders. "Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due — not new — taxes from purchases made online," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., adding the legislation is a "bipartisan, bicameral, common-sense solution that promotes states' rights and levels the playing field for our Main Street businesses." Legislation on the Amazon tax, named for the colossal Internet retailer, has languished for years. ..... <...

House Bill 3659, colloquially referred to as the "Amazon Tax," was passed in March of last year which broadened the scope of which companies would be required to collect use tax from its customers. ......... Now according to Crain's, Cook County Circuit Judge Robert Lopez Cepero ruled that the state overstepped its bounds with the law, and that it doesn't pass constitutional muster.

California recently instituted as part of its budget solution an “Amazon Tax” aimed at forcing out-of-state, online retailers with no physical presence in the Golden State to collect and remit sales tax in respect of goods sold to Californians where the retailer in question advertises, or maintains an “affiliate” referral relationship, with websites based within state lines. Prior to passage of the bill obligating collection and remittance in such circumstances, prominent online retailers including Amazon.com and Overstock.com had threatened to terminate relationships with affiliates, if the legislation became law. Now that it has, and affiliate relationships are being severed, something...

Fiscal Policy: Illinois becomes the latest state to enact a law imposing a sales tax on Internet retailers. Advertised as saving "main street" jobs, it's yet another creative way to drive them off. Ignoring the truism that when you tax something you get less of it, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday signed legislation making the Land of Lincoln the latest state to enact what's dubbed the Amazon Tax. It's designed to collect state sales taxes from online companies if in-state businesses do business through websites such as Seattle-based Amazon.com. In the past, online companies such as Amazon avoided collecting...

Amazon’s move to drop its Colorado associates so soon after Gov. Ritter signed a new law creating a so-called “Amazon tax” is regrettable – but not shocking. There were plenty of signals that repealing a tax exemption for online retailers would face legal challenges and possibly just such a move as Amazon launched today. The Post editorial board was among critics who warned the new law looked awfully problematic for such little gain . John Hickenlooper missed a golden opportunity in not weighing in on this tax. Score one for McInnis. Suddenly he looks like the prescient one while Denver’s...