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Originally Posted by Merischino
You are wrong. Currently, Companies like Amazon, wine Vineyards or more broadly, alcohol distributors, etc are required by law to collect sales taxes in any jurisdiction in which they physically operate. States where they have no physical presence have no jurisdiction over them and also have no jurisdiction over customers who choose to purchase from out-of-state vendors, whatever their business model.
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One of the issues going around is "what counts as a physical presence in the state?"
Amazon has warehouses & employees in several states where they don't currently pay sales taxes. I can understand a legal argument that, regardless of where corporate headquarters is, if the order is filled & shipped from within the state, that counts as a sale within the state and therefor is due sales tax.
Currently, that's legally blurry, or different in different states. Amazon is fighting to say that a warehouse/shipping center doesn't count as a physical presence for tax purposes; states are trying to say it does, because they know that most people aren't going to keep track of every online purchase and pay sales taxes accordingly. (Especially since that involves sorting out the difference between the *state* sales tax and the county & city sales taxes.)
I'm waiting for the ruling that says "if you sell ebooks, those count as purchases in that state and you pay taxes--which means your business counts as having a physical presence in that state, since you're making sales to individual addresses there, and any ebooks/mp3-and-physical-products combined vendor is going to have to collect sales taxes on all purchases."