Tomorrow in California, Amazon will "take on a role it has fought against for years: tax collector," as the Associated Press put it, adding that the imminent deadline for the online retailer to begin collecting and remitting sales tax on purchases by Golden State customers "has spurred at least some consumers into impulse-buying mode, making big-ticket purchases and stocking up on essentials before the tax collection kicks in."
But California Retailers Association president Bill Dombrowski said, "It will remove one incentive for not buying local. Retailers are looking forward to it, but we don't go out and buy champagne on September 15."
California Governor Jerry Brown signed the sales tax fairness bill in September 2011, and in Bookselling This Week, American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher called the change "a huge victory for sales tax fairness, and for Main Street retailers." He thanked the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association, among others, and especially "the tireless outreach efforts of California booksellers.... Indeed, our successes in the campaign for sales tax fairness are due, in large part, to the amazing advocacy efforts of independent booksellers throughout the country. And future success will hinge on the outreach of our members, as well."
Teicher also observed that "what many thought to be an impossibility only a few years ago is indeed becoming a reality as we inch ever-closer to passage of federal sales tax fairness legislation."
Amazon will begin collecting sales tax in New Jersey in July 2013; Virginia in September 2013; Indiana, Nevada and Tennessee in January 2014; and in South Carolina in January 2016, BTW wrote.
