Amazon Sales Tax

I am in a state that collects sales tax when you order from Amazon. 26 states do. The ability to do that is nothing new, if you have assets like a distribution center sooner or later the state will coerce the company into collecting.

However, I appear to have been paying this sales tax for a couple of years without realizing it. I just ordered something and this time I did notice they are showing an "estimated" sales tax amount. There are only 2 possibilities:

*Amazon has been showing me the sales tax on that final page before finalization of the order all along, and I am so lax about what I am paying I didn't see it.

*Amazon has been adding the sales tax without ever indicating they were going to do so, and I didn't catch it, just failing to compare the initial indication of charges with the final billing.

I really am inclined to think it is the latter. OK, shame on me too; on the other hand, that's pretty sneaky. I have a grudge now.

No grudge.

Estimated sales tax means our immediate execution subroutine indicates.... whereas our multitude of subroutines when they finish running in the background will probably indicate the same value. Its not just a matter of state and zipcode but also item type and hours of operation.

Reserve your grudge list for more significant topics, such as dealer disputes.

Quote: Fleastiff

No grudge.

Estimated sales tax means our immediate execution subroutine indicates.... whereas our multitude of subroutines when they finish running in the background will probably indicate the same value. Its not just a matter of state and zipcode but also item type and hours of operation.

Reserve your grudge list for more significant topics, such as dealer disputes.

Reserve your grudge for the tax code where hundreds if not thousands of combinations exists for sales tax combinations and rules. Most large companies will just rely on Vertex to calculate the taxes for them via a call from their software. Canada is not much better. India is far worse in that they have about 3 or 4 different classes of taxes and a withholding on all payments.

All of these calculations of course are expensive for the overhead of a company and indirectly costs them an amount per transaction that takes away from their profitability. VAT is a much better system when universally applied.