wolph33

sales tax is not part of my decision on buying fabric

pchp

Amazon is collecting sales tax from Colorado residents, too. I think one reason is that some of the Amazon affiliates are in Colorado or New York, so that is like having a store in the state.[/quote]

I don't know about Colorado but there are no Amazon locations in NYS. This is because of the NYS legislators trying to supersede federal interstate commerce laws because they think NY is losing revenue to internet vendors and they want to recover it. That's why Amazon is suing.[/quote]

There is no Amazon location here in CO, but there are vendors from Colorado who sell things through Amazon as "affiliates". There no doubt are also such vendors in NYS. I believe that is one reason why Colorado and New York think they have a case. If I recall correctly, Amazon's first response was to not let small business vendors from Colorado continue to have links on the Amazon website, or rather be "affiliates". These "affiliates" are the folks who are selling a "used" or "new" product through the Amazon website. Some of these "affiliates", like Target (for a Singer machine I just looked up on the Amazon site), do have an actual presence in both Colorado and New York. The Target website is required to collect the sales tax, so why shouldn't the Amazon website (through which you could pay for a product being sold by Target)?

I don't mind paying the sales tax. If people can get away with not paying the sales tax, then we'll be taxed within the state or city in some other way (e.g. property taxes) or there will be bigger cutbacks in services (e.g. unrepaired roads) due to lack of funds.