DISQUS

Mashable - The Social Media Guide: 2008/05/02/amazon-battles-ny-tax/

  • Chris · 1 year ago
    The lack of faith the State of New York has placed in the residents of the state is disgraceful. They have essentially called the people of the state thieves who cannot be trusted. I hope the Governor sees the errors of his ways (pun intended)
  • Paul Houle · 1 year ago
    As a New Yorker and a web developer, I'm concerned about the patchwork of laws that impact e-commerce.

    I used to work for a company that built web sites for wineries from the Fingerlakes region. Most of the worst problems (selling to underage people) have been solved, but sellers need to know about laws at the federal, state and local level to stay legal.

    It is unfair for local merchants that people don't pay taxes on online purchases. It's been suggested that people pay "use taxes" on online purchases at where they are domiciled, but that's a complicated solution for small merchants: the only winners would be big companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon and companies like PayChex.

    It would be nice to see a simple and fair system of sales tax that treats online and brick and mortar vendors fairly and that doesn't put crazy paperwork burdens on small businesses. With Washington dominated by big business, this won't happen.
  • Chris · 1 year ago
    Its unfair to burden anyone with being Mr Tax Collector. Two wrongs don't make a right. There is a clear law in place that says report your out of state purchases. If you don't want to do that its on you. Don't put it on "big companies"(which is just pandering considering many small companies have affiliate partnerships)

    By the way it is a lot easier for a big company to navigate this garbage than a small company. So while its BIG companies you want to punish the small companies are the ones that will feel the brunt of that punishment.
  • VCP-310 · 1 year ago
    yes amazon is getting very greedy.