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Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

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Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#121

Post by calloc »

jbooth wrote: post #92
anamax wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon (or more accurately, the purchaser) should be paying all sales taxes in the state where the purchaser lives, period. Seems cut and dried to me. If the corner store has to run sales tax, Amazon should too. Actually, the "corner store" doesn't have to collect sales tax. The "corner store" collects sales tax for the jurisdiction it is in. (Car dealers are an exception because of licensing.) CA says that its res…

Amazon's different because they're bigger than a rounding error, basically. The principle is "same amount of taxes for everyone". I don't live in California but if I did, I wouldn't be huge on the idea of tax-disadvantaging local businesses against out of state businesses.

Except that they are not... a book on Amazon may cost $10 and a book at your local Borders may cost $10. At your local borders sales tax gets collected, and the book ends up costing $13. When you purchase it on Amazon you pay $10, and are then supposed to declare that you bought the book and pay a Use Tax. That Use Tax for a $10 is $3. You as a consumer are now obligated to pay the state $3.

Having a business collect sales tax for a state it has no presence in is not in accordance with federal law, and California law does not apply due to interstate commerce laws. Thus there is no way to force Amazon to collect tax for sales to California residents.

--

Go tell the consumers to pay taxes for all of the stuff they have bought, it is the consumers who should be paying the taxes and aren't.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#122

Post by calloc »

nerfhammer wrote: post #83
allwein wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you'd like to consider a Wyoming shell company? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2708336

With your legal address in Wyoming wouldn't you need a personal address to which Amazon would need to send correspondence? Or if you open a bank account for this legal enttity, wouldn't the bank want an address they can actually correspond to?

That is why you have that legal address. That is where all correspondence for the business is sent. This is called a statutory agent.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#123

Post by jbooth »

calloc wrote: post #119
jbooth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, who brought in residents of different states? California residents should be paying the California sales tax on things they buy, and the state has a right to make that happen. Nobody's talking about forcing Colorado residents to do anything. I agree that they should find a way to make it a reasonable burden for Amazon to collect that information, but if local retailers have to collect and Amazon doesn't, that see…

Amazon is located in Washington, as a convenience to the user and to the state Amazon collects tax in accordance with Washington state law if someone ("user A") purchases an item from its site in Washington. This way "user A" in Washington doesn't owe the state any taxes for that purchase, and doesn't have to declare it on any tax forms. Now someone in California ("user B") purchases an item from Amazon. Amazon is lo…

Look, if we want a competitive marketplace, it makes sense that everyone operates under the same tax constraints. This isn't a pro-tax, anti-tax, pro or anti commerce clause thing. It's just basic economics, the best services will float to the top that way.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#124

Post by jbooth »

cek wrote: post #113
jbooth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, who brought in residents of different states? California residents should be paying the California sales tax on things they buy, and the state has a right to make that happen. Nobody's talking about forcing Colorado residents to do anything. I agree that they should find a way to make it a reasonable burden for Amazon to collect that information, but if local retailers have to collect and Amazon doesn't, that see…

"and the state has a right" Governments do not have rights. Only people have rights. Governments exist to protect the rights of people.

Oh, for criminy.. you know what I meant, right? California even has those ballot measures, the citizens vote on taxation policy on a regular basis.

The "government of the people, by the people and for the people" has a right, in the people's name, if you'd prefer.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#125

Post by cek »

jbooth wrote: post #124
cek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and the state has a right" Governments do not have rights. Only people have rights. Governments exist to protect the rights of people.

Oh, for criminy.. you know what I meant, right? California even has those ballot measures, the citizens vote on taxation policy on a regular basis. The "government of the people, by the people and for the people" has a right, in the people's name, if you'd prefer.

Glad to hear that's what you meant. But many people (especially those in government) seem to forget this.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#126

Post by evgen »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #81
jbooth wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's at all unreasonable for states to want to enforce the tax that's already on the books and supposed to be already reported/collected, as you state. The problem is the hangup with the commerce clause. Catalog companies didn't threaten to make a significant % of all sales into postal sales, the internet does. I'd hope that we could find a way to straighten things out where the state can still assess t…

I can totally understand why Amazon doesn't want to have to collect municipal sales tax. Every city in my state has a different potential tax rate, with a percentage determined by the state, by the county, by whether the city participates in mass transit, etc. Same zip codes have different taxes. Trying to manage that across the country is an ugly proposition! At least the EU has chosen a single VAT (even if it is ou…

I only we had machines which could perform these difficult lookups for us, and directories of information that could be queried to determine which taxes apply for a given address, along with some way for these machines to communicate so that different tax jurisdictions could keep the sales tax information current... Oh, that's right, we do.

The claim that determining the applicable sales tax for any given shipping/billing address is difficult is complete BS.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#127

Post by btilly »

T-hawk wrote: post #118
cheez wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Come on. Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society. Do you really think they are oblivious or do you think they're just looking out for #1?

The closest answer would be willful obliviousness. Like how voting for war funding means borrowing the money from sometime in the future. Politicians know these consequences on some level, but willfully just push them out of consideration. Whatever politicians pushed this in California were counting up the tax revenue that would be collected from Amazon. They couldn't have truly been ignorant that Amazon would pull o…

You have an excellent point and I think that it is even more cynical than that. They know full well that they wouldn't collect that revenue, but by passing the bill they can pretend that they will, and then they can add that line item to the budget to make it easier to balance on paper (which it has to be before it can be passed).

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#128

Post by cowkingdeluxe »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #27
ddlatham wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many affiliates are they willing to terminate? All of them (besides the 5 states it already collects for http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4... ) ?

Sales tax tends to be 5-10%, affiliate kickbacks tend to be less than that, which means that the increased revenue from affiliate links is in the same ballpark. It would be bad enough if these laws forced amazon to pay sales tax on purchases where the affiliate lived in the same state as the purchaser. Instead these laws force amazon to pay sales tax on all sales where the purchaser lives in a state where there is a…

Wal-Mart and best buy etc, have a lot to gain from this legislation. Aren't they lobbying for it?

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#129

Post by bilbo0s »

maxharris wrote: post #117
cheez wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Come on. Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society. Do you really think they are oblivious or do you think they're just looking out for #1?

But are they really looking out for themselves by doing so? A captain that helps sink the ship he's on (and keeps him from drowning) is not "looking out for #1" long-term.

He is if he has a dinghy no one else knows about.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#130

Post by brianleb »

jbooth wrote: post #123
calloc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is located in Washington, as a convenience to the user and to the state Amazon collects tax in accordance with Washington state law if someone ("user A") purchases an item from its site in Washington. This way "user A" in Washington doesn't owe the state any taxes for that purchase, and doesn't have to declare it on any tax forms. Now someone in California ("user B") purchases an item from Amazon. Amazon is lo…

Look, if we want a competitive marketplace, it makes sense that everyone operates under the same tax constraints. This isn't a pro-tax, anti-tax, pro or anti commerce clause thing. It's just basic economics, the best services will float to the top that way.

Everyone /is/ operating under the same tax constraints. The difference is, your local retailers aren't selling their products out of state like Amazon.
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