CNBC is reporting Amazon will begin collecting sales tax on April 1 in the final four states where online shoppers can buy products without adding a sales tax. That adds to the list of states Amazon added earlier this year, and completes the list of all 50 states now charging a sales tax on Amazon purchases. Online buyers in Maine, Hawaii, Idaho and New Mexico will see the sales tax added to their purchases.
Since 2012, Amazon has been a supporter of the Marketplace Fairness Act, which levels the playing field between brick and mortar businesses and online businesses that do not have to charge a sales tax. If an online retailer did not have a physical location in a state, it was not required to charge a sales tax based on where the customer was located. But, it was the customer’s responsibility to pay the sales tax to the state separately, which is believed to have rarely happened.
NAED has always been a strong supporter of the Marketplace Fairness Tax, along with the Remote Transactions Parity Act. If passed, it will help our distributors who are currently at a price disadvantage when competing with online retailers.
Only Alaska, Oregon, Delaware, New Hampshire and Montana are not collecting sales tax on Amazon purchases. Those states do not have a sales tax. The National Conference of State Legislatures believes states lost more than $23 billion in tax revenue in 2012 alone due to the inability to collect sales tax from online purchases.
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