Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

So if an amazon customer living in California buys an item that is fulfilled from Arizona, why should a California sales tax be involved? Why are we suddenly redefining the meaning of local sales tax? Are we now to the point where every state with a local sales tax will also impose tariffs on out-of-state goods? That seems to be the argument here.

>Uh, who brought in residents of different states?

That's the whole point of this issue. It involves parties in different states.

You're argument is that if someone from state A does business in state B, then it is the responsbility of the business in state B to collect the sales tax required by state A.

How can you not understand why this is a terrible argument? It means that every business would have to know and calculate the sales tax for all 49 other states and that every purchase would require proof of residence to verify which sales tax needed to be charged. Then the business would have to deal with filing taxes in 50 separate states.

Ugh...I can't even imagine how this makes any sense to anyone.

"and the state has a right"

Governments do not have rights. Only people have rights. Governments exist to protect the rights of people.

Amazon is located in Washington, as a convenience to the user and to the state Amazon collects tax in accordance with Washington state law if someone ("user A") purchases an item from its site in Washington.

This way "user A" in Washington doesn't owe the state any taxes for that purchase, and doesn't have to declare it on any tax forms.

Now someone in California ("user B") purchases an item from Amazon. Amazon is located in Washington and in accordance with federal law is only required to collect taxes for the state it is located in. So "user B" buys the product and Amazon does NOT collect the California state tax. "user B" now has to put all of his purchases down on his tax forms, and pay the tax for the items he bought.

Amazon had an affiliate program in California. This affiliate program was claimed by the state of California to mean that Amazon was located in California ("to constitute a physical presence"). If that is the case, then Amazon would legally be required to collect tax for "user B"'s purchase and remit it to the state of California.

This would effectively mean that Amazon would now have to file taxes in Washington as well as California. Not a problem for a big corporation you say, imagine then that all 50 states implement said system, Amazon would now be on the hook for filing and paying tax in 50 different states, even-though it technically does not have a physical presence in the state.

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Local retailers have a physical presence in the state, and are by law required to be registered businesses and thus are required to collect state sales tax for the state they are in. If however they also shipped out to other states (lets say they are located in CA, and ship to NJ) they would not have to collect sales tax on the sale when shipping to NJ since that is interstate commerce.

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This may not seem fair, but if any company doing any business with another business or individual out of the state where they have a presence has to keep track and file tax paperwork for each state they do business with it would become unmanageable, especially for smaller businesses where doing tax for one single state is already a big burden, imagine having to do it for all 50 and each one having different laws or different rules regarding taxation.

The states are basically attempting to close a loophole consumers are using, whereby they purchase items out of state so that they don't have to pay taxes on it, and then technically they are breaking the law by never declaring those items.

I carefully restrained myself from accusing you of having a predetermined conclusion and rationalizing it at all costs to logic, sanity, and undesired side effects, but after seeing your studious refusal to address the situation as it actually is, rather than how you'd like it to be, I regret my restraint.

I'm sorry this is actually an issue about cross-state jurisdiction, rather than the duty of large companies to be responsible to society and dutifully pay as many taxes as they can, but this is the situation as it actually is.

Then pursue the customers and force them to actually report their rightful use-tax when they file their taxes at the end of the year. Amazon isn't not collecting CA sales tax because they think it shouldn't be paid. They're not collecting the sales tax because they have no legal requirement to.

Except that they are not... a book on Amazon may cost $10 and a book at your local Borders may cost $10. At your local borders sales tax gets collected, and the book ends up costing $13. When you purchase it on Amazon you pay $10, and are then supposed to declare that you bought the book and pay a Use Tax. That Use Tax for a $10 is $3. You as a consumer are now obligated to pay the state $3.

Having a business collect sales tax for a state it has no presence in is not in accordance with federal law, and California law does not apply due to interstate commerce laws. Thus there is no way to force Amazon to collect tax for sales to California residents.

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Go tell the consumers to pay taxes for all of the stuff they have bought, it is the consumers who should be paying the taxes and aren't.

The problem with this is that there is no such dinghy in real life. Immigration is hard (try it sometime), and there's no guarantee that there will be anywhere better to go.

> The University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz found that for every week that unemployment benefits are extended, the average duration of unemployment goes up by 0.16 to 0.20 weeks. According to a paper coauthored by Alan Krueger, President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, the unemployed more than triple the time they spend job-hunting, from 20 minutes per week to 70 minutes per week, in the weeks right before benefits expire.

Should read passed the title next time.

Like many here, I have many book reviews myself that link to amazon. I link to amazon because that's what's most convenient for most people. I do not use an affiliate link because it's a conflict of interest. In the past magazines would have honest product reviews that sometimes were negative. Nowadays nearly every magazine only has glowing reviews and no negative ones. Editors tell writers that bad reviews will result in lost advertising revenue since publishers/manufacturers threaten to stop advertising in magazines with bad reviews of their products. Contrary to this I have many reviews that rip apart products and point out their numerous defects. I also have reviews that praise good products. Perhaps some people who read my reviews notice this and find the integrity refreshing or bizarrely archaic. In any case I certainly don't need the pitiful income from affiliate links, it makes more sense for me to just use a plain link.

It's a warehouse full of books. People in Texas order books on Amazon's website, and they ship from the warehouse in Texas to people in Texas.

So it's a store, but not a store. Boggle.

If I own a house, I own a house. If I own a company (which is just a paper entity, made-up), and that company owns the house, then, I pretty much actually own the house. Maybe not in a technical legal sense, but in a reality sense.

Always be wary of "paper reality" created by lawyers. It's not real. It can be a useful tool, a useful abstraction, but it can also separate us from physical reality, and can be used for evil purposes, and produce non-sensical results.

Another point related to this is that there's a lot of precedent in the courts where, even in a case where someone is claiming to be doing something which is technically consistent with the law, and/or are very carefully exploiting a loophole or ambiguity, there are judges who give rulings based on the principle of, "if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck... guess what? it's a f*cking duck!"

Small companies lose out also, because in general only large-ish companies can afford the overhead of maintaining shell companies. (Not just for this particular loophole, but for lots of loopholes involving shell companies.)

That view of (democratically elected) governmnets is scary.

Both national retailers and Amazon probably have the capabilities to do this, but equal protection clause states that you can't single out a single entity with a law. Would you have computing this be a barrier to entry for anyone who wants to sell over the internet? Especially as services and digital goods might also be considered taxable under certain jurisdictions.

They have local managers for every region and sub-region. Amazon doesn't have a manager assigned to Sonoma County to make sure that everything's on the up and up regarding Sonoma County tax laws. Amazon's actually much better equipped to handle the problem because of their size. It would be a real nightmare for a small site that can't afford even a single full time accountant.

Note that brick and mortar retailers only have to know the taxes which apply to each of their locations. While this is a lot of different locations for a big chain, it's far less than knowing the taxes for the location of every single customer.

To put it more concretely, Best Buy has to manage sales tax for ~1000 stores, but Amazon has to manage sales tax for ~100 million customers.

OK?

No, they spends tons getting it right. Especially stores who sell food and non-food items.

Just went through my email logs of Amazon purchases. One thing I bought from Amazon looks like it started in "City of Commerce", but this was a few days after I purchased it -- perhaps they fulfilled elsewhere and flew it over to be picked up by FedEx in CA?