[cypherpunks01]

For a couple years now, New York State has gotten away with forcing Amazon to charge sales tax via a similar state law regarding affiliates, does anyone know why amazon implemented the sales tax instead of dropping affiliates in that case?

[pmorici]

It looks like they have a subsidiary based in NY; http://www.amazon.com/Locations-Careers/b?ie=UTF8&node=2...

Could also be their NY affiliates are more lucrative. There are a lot of large media type companies that have a presence in NY so maybe the referrals they bring in out weight the amount of sales lost from NY residents because of the need to charge sales tax.

[cookiecaper]

I don't, but a guess may be that Amazon has some physical facilities in New York like a warehouse or office, meaning they can't say "they're making us pay tax even though we don't exist in the state and just mail people stuff" like they're saying in this case.

I don't know if Amazon has offices in New York or not, but that's my immediate guess.

[stevie_wilks]

You are correct sir: http://bit.ly/hFkxpK

[ikujythujik]

Cost of lost sales in NY is lower, lots of people in NY still buy from Amazon rather than Walmart And Amazon didn't want a test case about whether having other services in NY such as advertising agency or stockbrokers, lawyers constituted a presence