Californians, Say Good Bye to Amazon, B&H, Adorama,...

banpreso wrote in post #12683288
i can't believe this article mentioned ken rockwell... what the heck

To get so excited about the new law, he must have been making a boat load of money off of Amazon referrals.

cacawcacaw wrote in post #12683966
To get so excited about the new law, he must have been making a boat load of money off of Amazon referrals.

He always has pictures of a really nice house and cars. His site is impossible to miss if you search for anything photography related.

The CA Amazon affiliates have already been cut off, Mr. Rockwell is packing his bags for the next train to...[fill in the blank]

Bokehlicious wrote in post #12683998
The CA Amazon affiliates have already been cut off, Mr. Rockwell is packing his bags for the next train to...[fill in the blank]

I don't know the law, but what if he just operated his business from a trailer just across the state line?

tkbslc wrote in post #12683950
I like not having to pay sales tax, but remember all those local brick and mortar shops you neglect because you have to pay tax? That hurts the home state and economy. Having no tax is much of what has made Amazon so huge and creates multiple barriers to competition from local companies.

the whole argument about online killing brick & mortar becuse of not paying taxes is only half true...
A lot of what I buy online is because I cant find it locally, or the price online is so much cheaper (even with tax & shipping) that it just doesnt make sense to spend more money than I have to. If the price is close enough, then yes I will buy local...but if I am looking at paying $200-$300 more for a camera from a local merchant v's B&H...where are you buying from...

gonzogolf wrote in post #12684362
Yeah but its turned into an anti government rant.

Which is a great reason to get the discussion back on track, not to shut it down.

The sky isn't falling. Amazon never deserved an internet sales tax loophole and instead of complaining, they should be thanking California for all the years that they enjoyed a virtual subsidy, which gave them a huge advantage over the competition.

Amazon is now big enough (as are B&H, Adorama, etc.) that they can now compete on the proverbial level playing field. They'll adapt, or die, which is the way the free market is supposed to work. And if very small businesses can avoid collecting sales tax, even better, because I support anything (except direct government subsidies) that gives the ultra-small businesses a leg up on the large corporations.

The Amazon affiliates may consider themselves small businesses but they were just middle-men and the US already has too many agents, speculators, salesmen, investors, etc. The Amazon affiliates didn't produce anything of value; they just steered traffic in the most profitable way they could.

How about if POTN members suggest to Amazon that we form an "affiliate co-op group" and take our 8.5% referral fee as a discount on everything we buy from Amazon? That should just about cover the sales tax in most states.

TGrundvig wrote in post #12680745
You know, if they would just get rid of all the illegal aliens they would collect a lot more income taxes. It's pretty simple, cash employees do not pay income taxes. Why should they? If you were somewhere illegally, working for cash, would you pay taxes? Of course not. California has brought this on themselves. Get rid of the illegal aliens, force companies to only hire US citizens, and collect taxes.

Why dont we worry about the real crooks in america rather then a few imigrants, they DO pay taxes (social security, medicare,etc), but since their social is fake, they dont claim taxes back at the end of the year

Instead, people should stop believing the hype they see on CNN driven by a few corporate suits and politicians whom secretly are getting kick backs from these corporations (Hello Halliburton) ...

http://www.npr.org …s-save-companies-billions

http://consumerist.com …ayers-hide-3-billion.html

http://www.americaforp​urchase.com …ms-hiding-money-offshore/

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #12680784
My Bad .. You're Correct

From Wiki:
New York

In 2008, New York State passed a law that would force online retailers to collect sales taxes on shipments to state residents.[100] Shortly after the law was signed, amazon.com filed a complaint in the New York Supreme Court objecting to the law.[100] The complaint wasn't based on whether in-state customers should pay tax, but upon the long-standing practice of it being the responsibility of the customer to report the sales tax (known as use tax in this case) and not that of the out-of-state businesses.[100] The lawsuit was tossed out of court in January 2009, when New York State Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten stated "there is no basis upon which Amazon can prevail."

shagaholik wrote in post #12680814
not sure what newegg did but i remember they started charging tax when law was passed then after a few months they stopped charging tax. even now it's tax free. why can't other retailers do same?

Amazon charges tax in NY because it has affiliates in NY, same with Buy.com, NewEgg however cut all ties with their NY affiliates so thats why they dont charge tax in NY, I am assuming that the CA law will probably be modeled similar to the NY Law (maybe)

thanks for the clarification ruben00

thanks for the heads up, just put in my order for my 580EX ii

ruben00 wrote in post #12684549
Amazon charges tax in NY because it has affiliates in NY, same with Buy.com, NewEgg however cut all ties with their NY affiliates so thats why they dont charge tax in NY, I am assuming that the CA law will probably be modeled similar to the NY Law (maybe)

From what I've read, this is exactly what is happening. As someone else pointed out earlier in this thread, the US Supreme Court has already affirmed that businesses with no entities within that state do not need to collect sales tax for that state.

And what was signed into law yesterday was designed to basically work around that Supreme Court decision. The law basically "changes" what California considers to be "business entities" or relationships. Now, the State of California is basically saying if you have even a partnership (i.e. these affiliate programs), then that counts as Amazon operating an entity within the State of California. And of course, if you have an entity in the state, then you need to collect sales tax on in-state sales.

So, naturally, what Amazon has done is to terminate all ties with any affiliates in California. NO AFFILIATES = NO ENTITY = NO CALIFORNIA SALES TAX.

So, as I understand it, Amazon will NOT be charging California sales tax on in-state sales because they are severing all ties with what the new law regards as "entities".

* for those that are unaware, Amazon affiliates are comprised of website owners who help advertise Amazon products (via links, hyperlinks, etc) on their website to earn a small commission on sales (this is what "funds" sites like slickdeals, fatwallet, etc.. affiliate programs)

gonzogolf wrote in post #12682713
I dont like taxes on online sales, but the argument that its all that burdensome for companies like amazon to collect, calculate and forward the taxes to a particular state in the days of automated ordering and accounting systems is overstated.

Is that so? Ever run a retail business? Someone has to pay to set that system up. That's my point.

bigcountry wrote in post #12680988
you were suppose to be paying sales tax this whole time anyhow...so quit your crying.

Very true

dog rocket wrote in post #12682668
The point is, CA government is putting a huge administrative drain on out-of-state retailers to manage CA's state business. If CA wants out of state retailers to collect sales tax for them, they should set it up so it is much less painful for the retailer... better yet, transparent. I would be very interested to hear how the retailers are managing this. CA is so screwed up, I bet many less than trustworthy retailers could pocket much of those funds and CA would never be the wiser.

This is BS any business does the same thing. Software does all the work in a second. On line just needs to send the multiple checks to different states.

tkbslc wrote in post #12683950
They charge you the full state rate in Oregon. It just happens to be zero.

The point is that retailers with brick and mortar presences do charge tax and ship to the states as required. It is not that hard. I ordered some clothes online from a national retailer and after I put in my shipping address, it added the 6.8% UT sales tax to the bill based on another 10 lines of code in their app and a little database lookup. Then it would just record that they collected that $10 for my state in another database table and it's a simple report at the end of the quarter to figure out how much goes to each of the 50 states.

I like not having to pay sales tax, but remember all those local brick and mortar shops you neglect because you have to pay tax? That hurts the home state and economy. Having no tax is much of what has made Amazon so huge and creates multiple barriers to competition from local companies.

Finally a voice of reason.

Lets look at this from another perspective Amazon ships everything it sells to various states. That means tons of fuel being purchased to ship and fuel sales bring in state tax which provides revenue to local governments.

The same with building the trucks and paying the drivers and pickers and packers who process all those orders which in turn creates federal tax. While the scale might be tipped more in favor of certain states and foreign countries like China it has been that way for a long time. To some degree Amazon hurts local government but anyone who believes that Best Buy forks over every dime of sales tax it collects would have to be a fool.