Amazon to collect taxes in NY while fighting NY in court

by Brad Linder May 15th 2008

While Amazon plans to fight New York's recent decision to start collecting, the company has updated its tax collection page to let NY customers know that it will begin collecting tax on June 1st.

The state of New York recently passed legislation which requires any company with affiliates in the state to collect taxes on any items sold in New York. That covers companies like Amazon which allow individual bloggers and web site operators to add links to Amazon products on their web sites. Amazon doesn't actually have any warehouses or business offices in New York. But thousands of New Yorkers who blog who run part time businesses from their home are considered representatives of the company under the state law, which means Amazon has to collect taxes.

Yesterday, Overstock.com decided that the easiest way to avoid paying taxes was to temporarily suspend its relationships with New York-based affiliates. But Amazon, which has already vowed to fight the new law in court, must be making a fair amount of money from New York based affiliates, because the company will instead collect taxes until the issue is resolved, even if that discourages some New Yorkers from buying products through Amazon.

[via CNET]

Tags: amazon, new-york, taxes

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

STEVEN said 2:12PM on 5-16-2008

i shall be using my brothers address in new jersey and picking my stuff up there when i visit lol no tax for me

Grimes said 12:46AM on 5-18-2008

Yeah, what this basically means for the short term is that I'm going to make sure to buy the things I've been planning before June first and then sit tight until this gets resolved one way or the other.
For the longer term, if this ends up being permanent, it may well mean I switch to asking for gift cards from somewhere else for all my birthday and christmas gifts.
New Egg maybe.

I hate taxes for online stuff. Stupid new york state.

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