We learn from this morning’s Day that Amazon will be building a “customer fulfillment center” here in the Nutmeg State, and will have to begin collecting sales taxes on in state purchases in November. Amazon, of course, has been in the forefront of the lobbying effort to keep states from collecting sales taxes on internet sales. Let’s look into the future, as Amazon approaches its goal of same day delivery throughout most of the nation.
That will require customer fulfillment centers in almost every state, subjecting Amazon to state sales taxes everywhere. Look for Amazon to have a change of heart, and support efforts to require its far smaller competitors to remit sales taxes to all states, rather than only to those states in which they have a physical presence. This is actually good public policy, but at that point it will be used by Amazon as a cudgel to destroy its smaller competitors.
Okay, I didn’t read far enough when I pecked the preceding out this morning. I see one of the folks the Day interviewed made the same prediction:
Pomp also said he thought Amazon would become a champion for a federal law on sales tax collection now that it will be collecting sales tax while other online retailers without a physical presence are not.
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