Immediately suspend sales to anyone in the state of Texas.
The "hardball" approach isn't always the best. If you play hardball and lose, you permanently lower your power and influence.
Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#42Amazon provides a fantastic service that millions of customers enjoy. Can we just leave them alone to keep making our lives easier, please?
But the govt needs funds to make your lives harder, don't you see? It's that old yin-yang thing.
Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#43These are the warning shots. As commerce increasingly goes to the web, hungry states will be tapping more companies for a piece of the action.
Most would prefer to buy locally if prices are competitive. They don't mind paying reasonable taxes. But when the price of things on Amazon are significantly less ...
um, no.
click on computer. thing arrives at my door. vs get in car, drive in traffic, deal with idiot shoppers, salesoids etc.
Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#44Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#45This can be difficult to explain. Sales tax or 'Sales and Use tax 'SUT' is the responsibility of the customer not the vendor. I'm an accountant and often a small business will send us a bill that doesn't include sales tax. Some things are exempt from sales tax, but some things are not. It's up to us to decide if we need to 'assess' ourselves sales tax based on the service/product that we received. We send a check to…
"Sales tax or 'Sales and Use tax 'SUT' is the responsibility of the customer not the vendor."
Wouldn't that imply that a vendor could just not charge sales tax and not be fined for it? Which doesn't seem right.
Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#46Isn't interstate commerce non-taxable, as per the constitution?
These taxes aren't on the commerce in the items. Rather, they are written as taxes on using the items in the state. The courts (including the Supreme Court) have decided that this is OK under the interstate commerce clause as long as the tax doesn't make goods from out of state cost more than goods from in state.
So, if a state were to try to enforce a tax on mail-order goods from out of state, but did not tax those goods when bought in state, then they would be in for a Constitutional smack down.
This gets interesting when a tax was also collected by the state the goods came from. What the courts have decided is that the destination state can only collect the difference between what the receiver paid to the origin state and what the tax would have been for a local purchase. Thus, if you buy a car in a state with a 4% tax, and then take it to a state with a 6% tax and try to register it there, they can collect 2%.
None of this, though, is the issue in this case. No one seriously disputes that Texas can make Texas residents pay this tax. The issue is whether Texas can make Amazon collect the tax at time of purchase for Texas. If not, Texas will have to ask its residents to track their Amazon purchases themselves and remit the tax they owe. That's what most states do now--and it is widely ignored. Most people, in fact, have no idea that they are supposed to keep track of the out of state purchases and pay state tax on them.
Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#47Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#48Re: Texas sends Amazon a $269M uncollected sales tax bill
#49This can be difficult to explain. Sales tax or 'Sales and Use tax 'SUT' is the responsibility of the customer not the vendor. I'm an accountant and often a small business will send us a bill that doesn't include sales tax. Some things are exempt from sales tax, but some things are not. It's up to us to decide if we need to 'assess' ourselves sales tax based on the service/product that we received. We send a check to…
"Sales tax or 'Sales and Use tax 'SUT' is the responsibility of the customer not the vendor." Wouldn't that imply that a vendor could just not charge sales tax and not be fined for it? Which doesn't seem right.
I'm not quite sure what makes the difference. I'm sure there are laws for large corporations vs. a small business. All I know is when our corporation isn't charged sales tax on a non-exempt item, it's our responsibility to pay the sales tax, even though we were the customer.