Amazon & Sales Tax- wsj
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As is evident from Amazon's huge success as an online retailer, millions of consumers prefer to shop via Amazon.com for millions of products. One of the reasons Amazon is so popular is because it offers, well, everything, and as an online retailer, charges no sales tax. This has long been a point of contention for brick & mortar retailers as not only do they have to compete with Amazon's already discounted prices, but then charge sales tax on top of that. A two-fold cost increase to drive more customers to online retailers.
Amazon's advantage, however, is being chipped away at gradually as the issue of sales tax for online retailers gets more and more attention. It will be interesting to see where this issue goes and how it will effect e-commerce and the retail industry as a whole.
The states as well as many merchants has been complaining for years about the competition from online virtual stores. The states just wants more revenue. I feel as many, that with additional revenue they would find ways to spend that as well and at some point they would be in the same situation as they are now. There is always a worthy cause to spend money on. Placing taxes on online purchases won't solve the problem with states. Living within your means like all of have to do on a daily bases would solve their problem.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, living within your means gets harder and harder when so many wonderful items to buy are just a click away! Even more dangerous when you turn on Amazon's 'one-click shopping'... hahaha. While it is an enormous amount of lost revenue not charging sales tax on items purchased online- i agree that it will always be something else...
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