Comments on: Amazon.com sues N.Y. over new online sales tax

As expected, Seattle-based e-tailer asks the New York state supreme court to overturn a new law that expands tax collection requirements for out-of-state companies.

[michael_0001]

Go after your own companies

NY should be more interesting in collecting taxes from their own companies. If they passed a law that all NY companies had to collect NY tax for ALL sales (even if the sale is to an out of state customer), the net effect should be the same. And then customers could decide to do business with companies that reside in states with lower tax rates, thereby INCREASING the tax revenue for those states.

[weegg]

this would cause business to leave NY

NY would lose more than it gains with your suggested approach
since now any business in NY will be at a disadvantage relative to
other businesses outside of states.

What should happen is for NY and other high tax states to clean
their own house (reduce gov't and their handouts) and bring its
taxes in alignment with the rest of the states). If not I would not
blame businesses at all for leaving NY for greener pastures.

[Gary F. Ciesla]

Internet Tax

I'm glad to hear of the NY tax. It's about time. As e-commerce grows, its built-in tax-free advantage will harm actual stores who must charge the added tax. NY's law might not be the best law, but it's a start. Gary Ciesla, Highland Falls, NY.

[James7777777]

How can you support taxation without representation???

NY is allowed to collect taxes from it's residents who buy online. Forcing companies from out of state to collect taxes is wrong. Since the company is out of state they have no representation with the New York government and should not be asked to pay taxes.

NY residents are expected to pay taxes from online purchases, so there is no "built-in tax-free advantage", only New Yorker's who are committing tax fraud and a government trying to get others to fix the problem.

[Brooklynite2k]

I agree with James 7x7. How could you be happy about NY and their taxes anyways? I understand the point of it possibly hurting businesses but with NYS over 100 Billion dollar budget (which even our own federal goverment has said is ridiculous) laying yet another tax on NYS consumers who pay just about the highest of anywhere in the country is just one more straw on the camels back.

[thurston24]

Taxation no representation.

That is exactly right. I am a Tax Economist. The NY Law violates Constitutional law. Amazon is being treated the same as the colonials by the British empire leading up to the revolution.

[pmfjoe]

What about the sales of other vendors stuff?

I sell stuff on Amazon, anyone can either through their listings or auctions. Now I have no experiance with their auctions however I can say there is no way for me to collect taxes on stuff sold through their listing program.

As a business if I ship a product to a buyer in Florida where I am based then I must collect taxes on it. However if I list a product on Amazon and someone buys it in Florida Amazon doesn't collect taxes on it and there is no way for me to do so because all the payment info is handled by Amazon.

If you want to get technical I am sure plenty of people and businesses do the same thing in NY and they are all breaking the law by not charging sales tax.

[jsl4980]

Horrible waste of tax payer money

Not only will this law get over turned, New York state will have wasted hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of tax payer dollars fighting this unconstitutional law in court. Which will no doubt lead to even higher taxes on us New Yorkers. As if we weren't already one of the highest taxed states. I can't believe these idiots can waste our money like this... Every politician should forfeit their salary to pay for this insane law.

[solomonrex]

Shocking line

So Amazon doesn't have ANYONE working from home in the entirety of New York State? Isn't that crazy?

And I really hate that NYS expects people to volunteer information to get taxed. That just punishes the honest for no reason.

[JadedGamer]

A patchy way of ddging the real problem

... which is that tax payers ignore the (effectively unenforceable) use tax. So they go after the vendors instead of the customers, to make the vendors collect the tax for X states instead. But wait, there can also be sales tax on the county level, so you suddenly need to keep track of a few thousand different taxation authorities... and then there are the other countries...

If this passes, just wait for legislation that addresses the problem that people are speeding without getting caught and paying a fine. The car manufacturers should abvoiusly add a tracking device which would detect when the user was speeding and automatically fine them...

[sgoldste01]

This would bother me less if it affected all states, and not just New York. What makes us so special?

[benjaminstraight]

benjamin straight writes: Should be interesting because the ruling could effect ecommerce as a whole.

[edward1529]

I was about to purchase a french reference book "Le Besherelle Pratique" for some $52.00. When I went to make the final purchase, I saw that they not only were charging me the shipping fee of $4.00 but, in addition, they were also going to charge me $5.05 tax! I turned down the purchase. I would like to know how I can get this information to the right individual at Amazon.com in New York City to let them know that they lost the sale because of the $5.05 sales tax that they were going to charge me. Do you have any email address for Amazon.com sales department in NYC to let them know that I turned to other on-lign book dealers to make the purchase that do no (yet) charge NYC sales tax. Thanks, Edward Paolella

[eliot_p]

Gov. Patterson suks!!!!!!!!!!!!!