http://fortune.com/2018/03/29/amazon-tax-rate-president-donald-trump/In a move that sent Amazon’s shares reeling, President Donald Trump complained on Twitter Thursday that the online retail giant pays “little or no taxes to state & local governments.”Share: Donald Trump Is Wrong About Amazon Hurting the USPS
It’s not the first time he’s lashed out at them.
But his attack on the company, ostensibly in defense of brick-and-mortar retailers, was misleading.
Although Amazon had once collected sales tax in only a few states—those in which it had warehouses or offices—it now collects those taxes in all 45 states that have a sales tax.
Where Trump is correct: Amazon doesn’t collect taxes on behalf of third-party vendors, and it still may not collect some local taxes, giving it an advantage over some traditional retailers, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a think tank.
According to an analysis from the ITEP, the gap between the tax rate that some local tax jurisdictions impose and what Amazon collects can be as much as 7.5 percentage points in Homer, AK., for example.
“This analysis reveals that in seven states (Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania), Amazon is either not collecting local taxes or is charging a lower tax rate than local retailers,” the ITEP found by entering dozens of shipping addresses into Amazon’s website. Some “localities, however, are not collecting tax from out-of-state or even out-of-town businesses because of problematic restrictions in state or local law.”
Though according to the ITEP, localities and states may have an easier time collecting those taxes after next month, when the Supreme Court is expected to revisit a precedent set by the 1992 Quill vs. Wayfair ruling. That ruling said that retailers must collect sales taxes only in states in which they have a physical presence.