[bsder]

It also overlooks the fact that what Amazon was doing was outright illegal for years and they never got handed their ass on a platter.

For years, Amazon enabled everybody to bypass sales tax which gave Amazon a 4-8% advantage on books over brick and mortar that had to pay both rent and sales tax.

Quite a few of the "successful" tech companies followed this pattern: Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, etc. all engaged in blatantly illegal behavior to become big.

[fallingknife]

It was not illegal. Businesses are not required to charge sales tax in states where they have no operations.

[bsder]

The people receiving stuff from Amazon were supposed to report and pay the sales tax.

If you or I aided and abetted widespread tax evasion, we would get our asses handed to us in court.

[mandevil]

If you had said "were" instead of "are" this would be a true statement. Since South Dakota v. Wayfair in 2018, states have been allowed to charge sales taxes on businesses that have no operations in their state. That decision overturned 1992's Quill v. North Dakota, which held as you say. But that is no longer the law of the land.

The 5-4 majority in 2018 included two justices who were part of the unanimous holding in 1992 (Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas), voting to overturn their own decision from a quarter century before.

[nobody9999]

>For years, Amazon enabled everybody to bypass sales tax which gave Amazon a 4-8% advantage on books over brick and mortar that had to pay both rent and sales tax.

In 1992, SCOTUS ruled in Quill vs. North Dakota[0] that a business must have a "nexus" in a particular state to be required to collect sales taxes. I'd note that Amazon was founded in 1994.

And so, yes Amazon did have an advantage WRT sales taxes. But it wasn't, as you said, "outright illegal" until 2018 with SCOTUS' ruling in South Dakota vs. Wayfair Inc.[1] At which time, IIRC, Amazon continued collecting sales taxes that it had already been collecting in many states, as already it had nexuses (warehouses, distribution centers, etc.) in many places.

I'd note that I'm not "defending" Amazon here. They do plenty of shady stuff WRT pricing, as well as abusing their employees, suppliers and third-party sellers.

Why don't we take them to task for that stuff instead of making stuff up? Just sayin'

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair%2C_Inc.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>outright illegal for years and they never got handed their ass on a platter

Why doing something that is merely illegal deserves a punishment, in YOUR books?

Why don't you see that many laws are the in place serve some cartel or other, to be outright unjust?

[musicale]

Regulatory entrepreneurship.

See also: PayPal, OpenAI, ...