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A comment on Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders. Parent comment

Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by rodgerd on Sunday July 27, 2014 @05:23PM (#8094023)
And a lot of their profit is essentially reliant on competing by dodging taxes - their margin advantage to the consumer could, in many markets, simply disappear with the closure of a few sales or corporate tax loopholes.
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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by JoshTriplett on Sunday July 27, 2014 @06:48PM (#8094251)
Not charging sales tax in a jurisdiction you have no presence in isn't a loophole, it's an intentional feature at the federal level. States can't legally tax interstate commerce.

Amazon is only starting to charge sales taxes in states because they're establishing local presences in those states.

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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by toast0 on Sunday July 27, 2014 @09:53PM (#8094734)
They skirted the rules for local presence for a long time too. They had an engineering office in California, but were not charging sales tax. The office was a wholly owned subsidiary
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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by msg on Monday July 28, 2014 @02:20AM (#8095456)
IMHO skirting the rules is legal. If you care about Amazon's behavior because of the law you should have no problem here. If you care about local presence for some other reason you should be talking about that instead.

You can't blame companies for operating within the four corners of the law. Perhaps you would prefer that they break the law.

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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by fpgeek on Monday July 28, 2014 @03:37AM (#8095596)
Amazon doesn't agree. They are currently lobbying for Internet sales taxes and have been for at least a few years: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021778597_amazonlobb...

So far as I can tell, today (the past is another matter) Amazon has no issue charging sales taxes as long as buy.com and the rest have to as well.

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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by ars on Sunday July 27, 2014 @06:32PM (#8094206)
That's not true at all. Amazon charges sales tax in lots of places and it hasn't really affected them much at all.
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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by qq66 on Monday July 28, 2014 @02:33AM (#8095478)
It's affected them quite a bit especially in expensive large items like TVs which are easier to buy locally but have large sales tax burdens. The business is still growing but slower than it would have without sales tax.

Best Buy's gains over the last 2 years have been achieved in no small part due to price matching with Amazon including sales tax.

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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by opendais on Sunday July 27, 2014 @06:44PM (#8094242)
That used to be true but they have been collecting sales tax the past few years.
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Re:Amazon’s Cloud Is Growing So Fast It’s Scaring Shareholders by InclinedPlane on Monday July 28, 2014 @04:35AM (#8095720)
One of Amazon's most profitable regions is Washington state, where they are headquartered and pay sales tax out the wazoo.
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