Feeding the beast: Amazon to start collecting state taxes from NC customers | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Brant Clifton's reveals his side of the equation of e-commerce v. storefront in his "bare knuckles" Conservative online publication known as The Daily Haymaker.

    Open up your wallets, folks. It's official. The North Carolina Department of Revenue will start getting a cut of your purchases from Amazon.com starting February 1.

    It's not entirely clear what brought this latest decision on. The state has been fighting with Amazon since at least 2010. The retailer went to court to try and prevent the state government jackals from getting their claws on the personal data of North Carolinians who have purchased from Amazon's site. Tech industry media rightly described North Carolina state government's tactics as "an e-commerce witch hunt."

    The state settled with Amazon in court in 2011, but "reserved the right" to keep going after Amazon and its North Carolina customers. *Nice. *

    It looks like all of those "contributions" from retail industry lobbyists to the denizens of Jones Street are finally *paying off.* We were sold this whole idea of a "conservative revolution" in Raleigh. Yet, state government spending is exploding. They're trying to take more money out of our pockets to fund their orgy with toll roads and NOW taxes on e-commerce purchases. Where does it stop? Do you really think they'll stop with Amazon?

    DC has been trying to go down this road for some time  -  but it's been unsuccessful, so far. Big retailers like Amazon and Wal-Mart will weather this just fine. They have the resources in their accounting departments to track 50 different tax codes. This is really going to hurt the smaller entrepreneurs who have been using the Internet as a low-cost, quick method for expanding their markets and reaching new customers.