OT Amazon to begin charging state sales tax

I 'managed' to get the cable my dad needed faster, and the length I needed to move a TV away from a doorway where either he or my step mother would have run into it and hurt themselves. I don't owe the local merchant anything. They are very lazy about marking prices, expecting you to take it to the register to find out the costs. I did pay sales tax on the cable I bought, since it was shipped to me from within in state.

Or go to Dollar Tree and get it for $1. I just bought five bags there. I recently bought six cases of Progresso soup there. Winn-Dixie wants $2.59 a can. That was a savings of $114.48 on 72 cans. The two stores are only a couple hundred feet apart.

Less the $.15 Florida & county sales tax.

Then your issue was with the local vendor and only the local vendor. That doesn't change the fact that buying on the internet from out of state vendors that don't collect the sales tax is giving an unfair advantage to the internet vendor. Amazing that your internet vendor in state was able to calculate the tax.

Yawn. Since I paid the sales tax, it was calculated properly. There are no local business that sell a lot of the tools and parts I need. prior to the internet it meant paper catalogs and order forms, along with a business check. Use tax was paid to the state of Ohio every quarter, per the laws involved. Since 99% + of my work was for non profit or government agencies, I was audited every quarter because of the low sales tax reported. They never found an error, and after 18 months they flagged my account so I wouldn't lose a day and a half's work every 90 days.

And you get a lot of space saving rectangular cans to store hardware in, too. ;-)

I reject the notion of "unfair advantage." Passing tax laws to interfere with the marketplace is a terrible idea. It wasn't too many years ago that some states had "fair trade" laws that prohibited stores from selling at the price they wanted, such as a "loss leader." New Jersey, and its law prohibiting self-serve gas stations is another example. As a consequence, motorists in New Jersey have to pay more than those in neighboring states for gasoline.

No, the absence of a sales tax on internet sales is a "competitive" advantage, not an "unfair" one. Let the local store compete on location and immediate sales. Plus, there's nothing to stop the local store from offering their products on a web site. All they need is a 12-year old male to be their webmaster.

I must totally disagree, it is a totally unfair competitive advantage that can't be make up by setting up and selling their products on the web.

consequence,

Let's see, the sales tax advantage ranges from 0 to 9 percent, thereabouts. The typical price advantage shopping online ranges from nothing to 30 percent or more, with 15 to 25 percent being most common. Sounds to me like the price advantage dominates the tax advantage. Moreover i like being able to trade off have it now versus better price, and mucking with the taxes would not really change that. It is just a = tax grab.

Thus: not that important, let alone clearly not unfair.

?-)

Wake up; it is NOT "unfair". Why? A local store, by setting up a website creates a lower cost "channel" for sales, the (extra) profits from which can be used to lower in-store prices and thus be MORE competitive.

Only if the local store makes all of its sales outside of its own state, assuming the store is in a state with sales tax. Any and all sales within the state rather from the store front or from internet sales must have sales tax calculated for the sales area. If the retailer has a location in any of the states where sales tax is collected, it must then calculate for that state as well.

This is the reason Amazon has gotten in trouble in a number of states. In Texas they have been hit with a $291 million dollar claim for uncollected sales tax because they have setup a distribution warehouse in the state and as such have a physical presense in the state requiring them to collect sales tax on all sales in the state rather those sales result in goods shipped from their warehouse or from out of state. California has decided to impose the same intrepretation on Amazon and is seeking millions as well. Amazon thought it could sidestep the laws and now is finding that it might be better to accept a common approach rather than risk huge penalties.

"ONLY"??? Bull..NO sales people to pay makes for a large savings; sales tax is not a part of THAT equation..