Amazon's Scorched-Earth War Against the Rest of Us

motherjones.com

4 points·dclaysmith··4 comments

>a judge who, more often than not, is no fool.

And who, like other government employees, is paid by taxes, including sales taxes. In any other area of life, including business ethics, that would be considered a conflict of interest.

But that would mean no judge or other government employee could make any decisions related to taxes (and probably other decisions affecting their pocketbooks or work environment) and as such be a ridiculous and impossible condition. Unless, billswift, you're a libertarian and just want to do away with all government, then your comment makes complete sense.

Actually, I just wish people would recognize the reality. The important thing is that people don't fool themselves about the need to protect themselves and to be watchful of government power. Most people chant "separation of powers" like a mantra without realizing how much more the "separate powers" have in common.

I'm totally on Amazon's side on this. There is this little thing in the constitution called the commerce clause, and any state that is going to try to force you to collect their sales tax even though you don't have any physical presence in the state is violating Congress's sole authority to tax interstate commerce.

To say that an affiliate counts as a physical presence is preposterous, Amazon and the affiliate have a business arrangement, Amazon doesn't own the affiliate. If anything it is a Customer-Vendor relationship (Amazon to the Affiliate). It is as ridiculous as Georgia insisting that Amazon collect sales tax because the books they sell came from trees grown in Georgia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com