I have selected an article from Texas Tribune about the dispute between giant online retailer Amazon and Texas State. It all comes down to money! The Comptroller, Susan Combs says “Amazon owes $269 million in sales taxes.” The State backs its claim by pointing to the Amazon’s warehouse in Irving with 120 employees. However, the company rejects the argument that they conduct any business in the state and they emphasize that their physical presence is not the same as having a store front in Texas.
Governor Perry reads the law differently and is not on the same side as the Comptroller. His spokeswoman says that Perry’s main “concern is over losing jobs in Texas.” Nonetheless, there are jobs at stake on the other side too. Texas retailers who charge sale taxes are at disadvantage to their “out-of-state rivals.”
The rest of the article is about the different approaches to solve this problem nationwide. One of the methods to deal with this issue is to have a “click-through” law to capture a portion of online sales taxes as it is in place in New York. To have an idea why there is so much fight over this and why it is important to Texas to be able to tax out-of-state sellers the same as the in-state-sellers, the Comptroller estimates the state looses $600 million annually in online sales of tax. This would make a big difference in Texas budget gap.
This article is worth reading because it addresses issues concerning many Texas citizens, those who purchase items online. Before reading this article I was not aware of the ‘use tax’. When you buy something taxable in Texas, you owe Texas government taxes whether the seller collect them or not.
