Mall operator: Amazon to open hundreds of bookstores

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It's leverage.
Well run businesses always leverage their capabilities to the max, especially if it can get them into new markets or entire new businesses. Look at how they leveraged their inhouse IT expertise to develop a hosting business thst has evolved beyong website hosting into a full computing platform with its own distinct APIs. No surprise then that their biggest and closest competitor is Microsoft, another leverage expert. Oracle is a lot smaller but they are leveraging their installed base in the corporate world to bootstrap themselves into a cloud player. In fact, just about the only mayor tech firms *not* looking to leverage themselves into the cloud era are Facebook (who, like Twitter, are really a communications company) and Apple who are so unwilling to let go of their hardware roots they'd rather get into the car business. (That should be interesting.)

Oh Apple...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I was referring to the sales person comment. Apparently, a sales person counts as a presence. And sales person definition is quite broad.

I don't understand the "the website by itself is still not presence" statement. Are there states that tax you for window shopping?

Don't give them ideas!
So far they've only tried to tax online sales.

There are companies and activists who have long been pushing for a european style approach to sales tax: the act of selling to even one resident obliges the company to collect taxes regardless of whether or not there is any physical connection. Or even active outreach. Some still are.

Since Amazon is far from the only company that refuses to play tax collector the states with Use Tax are still "losing" a chunk of their booty and they keep looking for ways to define a web store as presence.

[HarryT]

Moderator Notice
A gentle reminder that discussions about taxation belong in the "Politics and Religion" forum.

Thank you.