Amazon.com dumps North Carolina affiliates
Contradiction
"The disputed tax legislation, drafted to help fill North Carolina's budget gap, would require online retailers with a physical presence in the state to collect sales tax on purchases originating there - same as a regular brick-and-mortar store. Customers are already supposed to pay a tax for online purchases on their own, however unsurprisingly, this isn't widely done."
As is clearly stated in that second sentence, this tax legislation was NOT "drafted to help fill North Carolina's budget gap". It was drafted because the NC residents are violating the tax laws by not paying sales/use tax on taxable items purchased from out-of-state retailers. To rectify that (to enforce the tax laws), the state drafted legislation to put the burden of tax collection on the retailers, the same as they do for the "brick-and-mortar" stores.
I fail to see why selling via an in-state affiliate or representative should be treated differently than selling via an in-state "brick-and-mortar" store. The state is simply telling the companies to collect the taxes because the states' residents fail to remit these owed taxes voluntarily. It's not like the state is telling the companies they have to pay state income tax. The reasons Amazon and others don't like these laws are because it makes them do more work, and, more importantly, the collection of sales tax might push their total price for a product higher than another company.
