Visual Business: Next Media Animation Summarizes Amazon.com Petition

As most online shoppers recognize, a new law requiring California retailers to collect sales tax has initiated a heated debate on the subject. Amazon.com Inc. has invited the public to rock their votes via a petition for a referendum.

To help explain Amazon.com Inc.'s shut down of their affiliate program in California, the debate over the new sales tax law and the current petition, Next Media Animation, a Taiwanese subsidiary of Next Media, has produced a short animation entitled "Amazon takes on California over sales tax."

Animated Californian voters are shown checking "YAY!" in support of a tax-free online market.

Which box are you checking, California?

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By Lauren Lloyd in News on July 18, 2011 2:00 PM

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mymhm

This video completely misses the point of why this fight is being waged. Amazon is not a CA based business and therefore should not be subject to CA taxes. It's why we citizens of CA pay taxes on purchases from Newegg, because they are based in CA.
This bill that Brown signed into law, unfairly targets Amazon by making a nebulous claim that because they do business with businesses in CA that they should be subject to state taxes. This will have a tremendously chilling effect on new venture capital, as now any business around the USA can be subjected to CA taxes if they do business with a CA based business. That's why the affiliate program had to be pulled. This law is going after Amazon specifically, but sets an extremely dangerous precedent for ANY business looking to use a CA service.
Similar laws have been deemed unconstitutional, and it really doesn't look like CA has much of a legal leg to stand on. Is Amazon taking advantage of the current rules? Absolutely, but they are the laws, and are currently backed by a 1992 Supreme Court decision. It's also not Amazon's fault that Brick and Mortar stores have done little to make themselves more competitive. They completely underestimated their own lack of appeal, and Amazon was able to build a reasonable business out of it (just like Blockbuster v Netflix).

So let's recap - This law does little to bring new revenue into the state, does little to make current brick & mortar businesses more competitive, potential scares off new investment, we'll have to spend tax funds defending it, has destroyed an additional revenue generating stream for thousands of CA residents, and it's probably not even constitutional.
Heck of a job...