Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Welcome To The Amazon: Leading Online Retail From Local Tax Avoidance Into Your Backyard, Sherry Tehrani

Sherry Tehrani

Online sales in the United States have increased by over 250 percent in the last ten years, reaching over 250 billion dollars in 2012.[1] Spearheaded by Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”), online retailers have fed off their competitive advantage of avoiding local sales tax, and have grown to capture roughly 7 percent of the retail market.[2] The juxtaposition of this upsurge of untaxed online sales and our nationwide recession has prompted state governments with crushing deficits to take on the tax loophole.

Local governments across the U.S. have passed legislation to enforce online sales tax collection, referred to as “Amazon …