Re: Calculating the sales taxes is not a simple matter

Local sales taxes are a bogus argument - if Amazon had a "physical presence" in NY, they would just pay the state rate and ignore township and county rates. There are very few municipalities that would reap more in taxes than it would cost in legal fees to fight such a case - the State's potential income would be vastly bigger, but it's legal costs would bot be much higher.

The "no taxation without representation" argument is typical of the shallow thinking that leads Americans to ask legal immigrants if they don't have to pay taxes. (The answer is that the IRS doesn't give a damn about representation - if you're in the US, you're liable for taxes on your income, citizen or not). Amazon won't be taxed if this law is enforced, it will simply be collecting Sales taxes from New York residents, most of whom do have a vote in NY State.

I don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else, but I know that getting my online purchases tax free from an internet retailer in the next state is a loophole, and that there is no basic principle of "tax fairness" that underpins this avoidance of Sales Tax. I don't know what the logic of the 92 Supreme Court case was, but there's no real technical "burden" on a retailer like Amazon in calculating these rates, it's just a question of losing their competitive advantage over NY based online retailers.