Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Amazon Backs National Online Sales Tax Bill

Seattle-based Amazon.com put its weight behind a new, national online sales tax bill, proposed by U.S. Senators Enzi, Durbin, and Alexander. The new Enzi-Durbin-Alexander bill requires Internet retailers to collect sales tax from their customers. Amazon said Wednesday that it "strongly supports enactment of the Enzi-Durbin-Alexander bill and will work with Congress, retailers, and the states to get this bi-partisan legislation passed". Amazon has staunchly been in opposition of states which have been seeking to pursue taxation of the Internet giant and other, out of state online retailers; it's unclear why Amazon supports this particular effort at online taxation. Amazon has previously argued that, due to the many variations in tax law, collecting taxes would be a burden to the company and others.