Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I started paying sales tax with a lot of my Amazon purchases a month or so ago. I haven't paid a lot of attention but I think the way it works is Amazon charges the tax when they're the seller or when the seller has a presence in Arkansas. So most of the third party stuff isn't taxed.
I could be wrong about this but I do know that some things are taxed and some not and whether Amazon is the vendor seems to be the obvious pattern.
Barry
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This is correct--I live in California and Amazon started charging sales tax on direct sales from Amazon a few years ago. When buying from a third party vendor, it is up to that vendor to tax or not to tax. If the vendor has a physical presence in California they are required to collect sales tax, if they do not they are not required to collect the tax.
Note--just because a vendor doesn't charge sales tax to a California resident, doesn't mean that the purchaser doesn't legally owe tax to the state of California. When Californians file their state income tax returns, they are supposed to report all taxable purchases that they made and weren't charged tax on--then pay a "use tax" on these purchases. I'm fairly certain that there aren't many residents who actually report these purchases and pay the use tax.