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by sib
3616 days ago
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"Amazon being able to escape sales tax early was bad" - they didn't escape it. In fact, they were following the law and acting exactly as traditional catalog retailers did; they charged sales tax to customers located in states in which Amazon has a physical presence. It only became a real political hot button issue when they started getting so big that they became a target. |
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It was bad because 1) it was bad for small businesses that had to collect and had a hard time competing on price alone to begin with -- making it impossible to compete. And 2) because sales tax is a huge tax contribution which otherwise the government would have counted on.
And regarding escaping, it was an integral part of their business plan, and they fully intended to fight for it.
> the State of California agreed to a delay of one year before requiring online retailers to begin collecting sales tax on sales to California addresses (Read the whole part on California [1])
Worse yet, Amazon wasn't even profiting in the process. Making Jeff either Satan or a genius (you'll find plenty of stories proclaiming both).
Amazon created jobs and shareholder value. I'll give them that.
---- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_tax