From a bottom-line perspective, I bet Amazon would be better off if they simply dropped all affiliates based in New York and ban future New Yorkers from being affiliates. It then a) saves them the work of complying and b) eliminates the tax for consumers (my personal favorite). I believe fewer people in New York will buy from Amazon if they don't get the tax discount (except for certain books like tech books which are much cheaper than they are in stores here). And how much does Amazon make from New York affiliates anyway?
I'm surprised Spitzer had time to write up this memo given all of his other activities.
You really think any company would ignore the New York market (even just the New York affiliate market) over the extra few lines of code required to add a % sales tax to orders with a NY zip code?
They'd drop the _affiliates_ in NY, not all of the customers.
And to assume that the main cost to Amazon is in developer time is crazy. When the customer base suddenly starts getting taxes, the 'savings' at Amazon is lower in comparison to other competitors, and so they lose actual customers.
I like this idea. And when NY affiliates complain, Amazon can point them to this story along with the contact information for the bureaucratic tools responsible for passing such a law.
Cripes! Now even our states are resorting to protectionism!
I wonder how long it will be before an online retailer just refuses to ship to certain states because the tax code is too complicated there to make the sale worth it.
That brings up another interesting question, how does New York State prosecute someone in another state for a violation of NY state laws?
I wonder how long it will be before an online retailer just refuses to ship to certain states because the tax code is too complicated there to make the sale worth it.
By saying that the affiliates create a physical presence, I would assume that Amazon would need to know each affiliates physical location (might not be the same as their mailing address) and need to know the local tax code and apply the local taxes as well as the state tax. Because of this, New Yorks law will probably fail in court. New York cannot make Internet companies apply only some taxes and not others it would raise a basic unfairness to the locality of the affiliate..
grass roots is needed, people in New York (and everywhere) need to know this isn't right; Where were Amazon's lobbyist?! There are good things they do sometimes (this should have been one)
I'm surprised Spitzer had time to write up this memo given all of his other activities.