Buy now: Amazon sales tax hits Saturday

Sept. 13, 2012

By John Seiler

If you live in California and have been thinking of buying anything on Amazon.com, do so today or Friday. On Saturday, Sept. 15, the state imposes its sales tax — 8 percent or so depending on the county — on purchases from Amazon.com.

A year ago, Gov. Jerry Brown forced this deal on Amazon.com. According to federal law, sales tax doesn’t have to be paid by businesses located in other states. But Brown, obsessed with making us all more tax slaves than we already are, signed into law legislation imposing the tax anyway. Then he negotiated a deal with Amazon to delay the tax a year.

Amazon.com since has tried to make the best of a bad deal by building warehouses in the state. So now there’s no way to go back. The upside is that we get goods shipped to us a day or so earlier than before. I imagine most people would rather wait a day extra than pay the tax.

Local, California businesses did complain that it was unfair they had to fork over the sales tax, but Amazon.com did not. Walmart made the same complaint, lobbying for the tax. The solution there was simple: cancel the sales tax for everybody. Side benefits would have been that we would be enslaved by taxes a little less, and government would have to cut out some of its incredible waste, fraud and abuse. It still would have robbed us copiously through property and income taxes.

To avoid giving Brown more of your money for which he will only do evil, buy today and tomorrow. For Saturday the tax shackles are tightened around your wrists.