Amazon Associates and California Tax Law Signed in 2011

This is a classic example of "free" money that Governments love to levy on people - tax those who NEVER will get any "benefit" of the tax.

 

Some guesses & some facts:
1. People who live in California must pay use tax (sales) on things THEY buy over the Internet - that has not changed (lots of states had these laws long before the Internet was even invented. They just enforce them more now.)
2. Amazon Associates paid INCOME tax on the income they earned. Income is income so there is no income "tax" loss at all. (Now there will be.)
3. Amazon / Associates did not collect sales taxes - but see #1 above - the USERS who live in California were ALREADY required to report purchases and remit those taxes to California ANYWAY.
4. The law, as much as I can tell, would require ANY sale made through a link on any web page by someone who lives in California to collect sales tax on that item REGARDLESS of where it was shipped from or who it was shipped to. If a person went to Amazon via a link on a web page (regardless of where that page was served from) lived in Texas, shipped to as a gift to someone in Florida, the Associate would HAVE to collect Calif sales that since they consider THEM to have sold the item - and thus told Amazon that to make the collection easier for the State of California Amazon must collect sales taxes because the associate lived in California.

 

This is easily seen to be way outside the limits of the purview of the states to tax people from OTHER states and interfering with commerce - which is the sole domain of the Federal side. Since the people in the OTHER states would be paying sales tax to California even though they do not live there.

 

Nothing in law is ever settled - people (judges) can - and do - overturn 100 or even 500 year old laws. It is what they think a law means and their interpretation and precedent is thrown away. The Federal judge that said that taking private land from one person, paying the owner some value, then selling it to another private person (company) so that a higher tax can be generated by doing so to the government is in the public good - is Constitutional.

 

If my above 4 points are correct - the ONLY thing that Amazon could do - asides from rewriting their base code to account for every state exception and comply with all the different taxing authorities in California to figure out the sales tax and collect from EVERYONE regardless of where they live in the USA  - OR internationally --  was to wipe out the Associates program to avoid all this complexity.

 

How would someone in Germany get a refund from California of sales taxes paid automatically and added to their bill because they bought an item from seeing a  web link on a page who lives in California?