Red Marks No-Go States for Amazon Under Sales Tax Strategy

Amazon, which has become either a life saver or a store wrecker in Tennessee, depending on your point of view, uses shades of red, yellow and green literally to direct its employees on where they should and shouldn't go when traveling in the United States, according to the WSJ on Wednesday. The full account of the map process requires a subscription to the Journal.

According to the story by reporter Stu Woo, Amazon has a system where staffers must refer to a company map before entering specific states, because if they enter the wrong states it might trigger tax laws where Amazon would have to collect sales taxes on its business there.

We need to make sure that Gov. Haslam resolves this tax issue the correct way by the end of the year. Amazon should not receive unfair tax relief because they "cannot find a way to get the tax code right for every state," so they just want to pass along the duty of paying the tax to customers. Amazon needs to play fair and give back to our state like every other business located in our fine state. Aren't they going to use our roads? Aren't they going to hire workers who were educated at our public schools? Aren't they going to need assistance from our police, firefighters, etc? Well they need to help contribute to paying for all these things that they receive by building a distribution center in our state! We do not need to put our local businesses at a disadvantage.

While the idea of getting much of anything resembling responsible action through the US Congress seems questionable, I can see Haslam's point in desiring that the tax collection issue be fixed at that level. If there's a uniform rule on collecting state and local sales tax nationwide, it erases the need to give Amazon a waiver without risking the job losses incumbent in Amazon deciding to take their business elsewhere.

The old ways of doing things were developed before the advent of stuff like FedEx, UPS, and the Internet. The tax code was unwieldy then and now is just a roadblock.

Are we saying that if someone in Birmingham purchases something from an Ohio manufacturer, they should pay tax to us because it shipped out of a distro center in TN? Or is it just that if a TN native purchases something that ships from the distro center here they should pay the tax? Either way, I'm pretty sure that we will end up owing accountants and IGs damn near everything we collect. It looks to me to be absolutely hellish to have to keep up with. What happens if I have a P.O. box in Middlesboro, KY with a "forward to" address set up? Did the item sell to TN or KY? It is a system that is begging to be played and I understand why Amazon wants no part of it.

An inability or refusal to adapt to changing environments is one thing that all extinct species have in common.