Taxing of Internet Purchases

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

"raise an estimated $317 million a year in new state and local government revenue" while "the affiliates combined paid $152 million in state income taxes last year..." While this is by no means a complete analysis, I personally would be willing to give up $152 to gain $317

I think the point is that if in response to this Amazon simply eliminates the affiliate program California is giving up $152 million to gain nothing (since they won't be getting any sales tax from Amazon) and then if large successful affiliates move to Nevada to stay in business California also loses additional income tax from whatever additional they would have paid.

And again, while maintaining differentiation for each tax jurisdiction may not be that difficult in the grand scheme of things, it also is still a pain in the ass and not particularly cheap to comply with on the purchase end and an even bigger pain in the ass to comply with on the audit end. But I'm not so much arguing for why Amazon shouldn't have to do this, but for why Amazon will not want to do it if they can at all avoid it.

But for anybody who thinks Amazon should have to do this, I would be curious to know how consistently they pay use taxes on purchases from out of state?

[Stan4dSteph]

There is a space to pay sales tax from mail order purchases on the NY state income tax form. It's up to you to determine how much you want to pay in. Any store that has a physical location inside NYS must charge sales tax on a mail order purchase if shipping to an address in NY. We started having to pay sales tax on LL Bean after they built stores here.