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Monday, November 16, 2009

Should Amazon.com charge PA sales tax?

Amazon.com is fighting efforts by New York and other states to collect sales taxes for billions of dollars in online sales, reports Michael Mazerov of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities here.

Amazon says keeping track of who owes what is unfair and burdensome -- yet Amazon already collects state taxes on purchases from sites for Target, Macy's and other clients that charge proper state taxes, according to Mazerov.

Should Amazon pay? It's an especially relevant question for Pennsylvania, which is one of five states where "Amazon has a physical presence (including a new Hazleton warehouse that's supposed to employ over 1,000 by next year) but nonetheless doesn't collect sales tax," Mazerov told me. 

 


 
Posted by Joseph N. DiStefano @ 12:33 PM  Permalink | 10 comments
Comments   
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 1:17 PM, 11/16/2009
    Billy, where I live, down in the First State, we get along all right with no sales tax, and not much property tax either. On the other hand, if I lived in PA, and I didn't use Amazon, but shopped at real stores, or owned one, I'd probly wanna know why I was paying sales tax, while my rich out-of-state online competition wasn't.
    — distefj
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 1:30 PM, 11/16/2009
    What the government should do is require a person to submit to the state a complete inventory of everything a person has. Then, every year, a "gestapo" officer enters your house, and if you do not have a sales receipt showing the sales tax paid for everything new in your home, you are fined,and perhaps put in prison. No sense only picking on things from Amazon. No telling where the non-taxed items were bought. And if they were bought across the State line in Delaware, and the use tax not paid, then they seize your car. No sense in letting consumers avoid taxes, when business lobbyists can insert provisions into the tax code to exempt their special interests.
    — Montco voter
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 2:29 PM, 11/16/2009
    Wonder why so many local stores are struggling or going out of business? It's is not a level playing field when an online merchant has an automatic 6-8% price advantage. Not to mention the lost revenue that the states can hardly afford in these times. BTW, Pa. law already requires the consumer to declare and pay the sales tax on items purchased online. It's just hasn't been enforced.
    — Hosermike
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 2:40 PM, 11/16/2009
    NO! The government needs to stop already. How much more do they expect us to pay?!?! They've got us every which way from Sunday as it is!
    — america
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 3:25 PM, 11/16/2009
    There isn't really much of a price advantage to shopping online. The main advantage that online marketplaces have over brick-and-mortar stores is selection and availability. I can't count how many times I've gone to a local shop to look for something, only to not find it and have to buy it online. I'd love to be able to find more things locally, I prefer that over paying inflated S&H costs and waiting. As for collecting taxes on mail order and internet-bought items - yeah, when pigs fly. It should be up to the businesses to collect taxes, not people to keep track of every single purchase they ever made in a year, unless they are small business owners. Besides, in PA, especially Philly, we get plenty of payroll taxes taken out.
    — horriblekitty
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 4:09 PM, 11/16/2009
    Too many folks break the law by not paying their use taxes. So long as our legislature says we have to pay taxes on internet purchases, it makes it a whole heck of a lot easier for everyone to just pay the tax at the point of sale, i.e. on Amazon. Otherwise, it's a hassle to pay it one's own. We don't ask people to save their receipts and pay their sales taxes themselves - that would be a nightmare. Yet that is exactly what we are doing with internet purchases! Also, while everyone is entitled to their views on how much revenue the Commonwealth should raise and what types of taxes (business, income, sales, vice, property, etc.) we should use to collect that revenue, ASSUMING we believe it's appropropriate to tax goods at 6-8% (which we apparently do), it hardly makes sense to de facto exempt the internet-savvy demographic from these taxes while enforcing them only against the "old school" folks who buy in brick and mortar stores.
    — JoeInBH
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 5:51 PM, 11/16/2009
    Not now - not ever!
    — mikecreich
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:32 AM, 03/16/2011
    Amazon.com makes no point of sale transactions in PA and therefore should not be required to collect sales tax on purchases. If local merchants see this as unfair competition, then they should begin selling merchandise on Amazon.com. It would have a major impact on their sales volume. Retailers from all over the country are already doing it.
    — viola111


10 comments
About Joseph N. DiStefano
Joseph N. DiStefano writes this blog to feed his PhillyDeals column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Joe has been a member of Bloomberg LP’s New York Finance Team, wrote the book “Comcasted,” taught writing at St. Joseph’s University, and studied economics and history at Penn. Reach Joe at 215-854-5194 and JoeD@phillynews.com
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