The Egg wrote:Speaking of Amazon, apparently they just started charging sales tax in IL starting February 1st. That really bothers me for some reason. Why do they give in to these greedy states so easily?
It's complicated, and has a history going back several years.
In 2011 Illinois passed a law requiring all online retailers with a physical business presence in the state to collect Illinois sales tax. Instead of collecting the tax, Amazon's response was to drop all of their Illinois-based affiliates. The law was subsequently challenged in court, and eventually found to be in conflict with federal law since it discriminated against Internet-based retailers. Amazon subsequently reinstated their Illinois affiliate program.
Fast forward to the present. The Illinois law that got struck down has been reworded so that it no longer specifically singles out Internet-based businesses. The modified law (which is expected to stand this time) went into effect Jan 1.
Amazon has apparently decided to comply this time around, rather than jerking their Illinois affiliates around again. Or maybe they've opened a distribution center in the state since then (not sure), which would make it more difficult to remove their physical business presence again.
(Technically, you've *always* been required to pay sales tax on out-of-state purchases in Illinois. However, until now the burden of compliance was on the buyer, and was essentially done on the honor system. You were supposed to pay "use tax" on out-of-state purchases made over the prior year, along with your income tax. In theory if you ever got audited by IDOR you could be fined if they determined that you had not paid enough use tax, but I've never heard of this happening to anyone.)