Since when? If I want variety, the easiest place to get it is online, and not necessarily just because I can use Google Shopping to check throusands of retailers in less time than it takes to get in the car, but because, without the requirements of maintaining a sales floor, an internet retailer can have an entire warehouse full of stock at my fingertips. For that matter, a lot of them work with suppliers who will drop ship, eliminating the need to even have the item in stock at the retailer.
There are vendors that only sell stereo wiring harnesses for automobiles. No stereos, no speakers, no washing machines, no computers.
There are vendors that only sell nuts/bolts/fasteners. No hammers, no windows, no kitchen remodeling services.
There are vendors that only sell bulk ammo. No guns, holsters, slings, magazines.
A consumer WILL go to those vendors for specific needs.
But only while it is economically viable for him to do so.
When Audio Express charges him $25 for a wiring harness adapter to put an Alpine stereo into his GMC pickup, but he can get it from an online vendor for $9.95 + $7 shipping, he'll do it. Arguably, he'd still do it if sales tax were being charged, I guess.
I put in orders at Wideners, Midway or Grafs fairly often. I tend to buy right around the $150-$200 level whenever I do, because it seems to wind up being the optimized price point where I save enough on sales tax to offset the shipping costs, gas costs and drive time to go down to Sportsman's Warehouse, Bass Pro or the local gun shop to buy my stuff.
On average, there seems to be about a 25% cheaper rate for just about anything purchased online. About 10% winds up getting needed to pay for shipping. The B&M people are losing business due to the 15% overall cheaper cost of things online, and they want to apply sales tax to as many potential lost sales as possible so that the 15% becomes 5-8% and their prices look better to the consumer.
THAT is the push for this.
The State is not being hurt by losing out on innernetz sales taxes. The loss of Amazon to a non-crazy State results in the loss of hundreds of jobs, many of which were reasonably high paying. Assuming the state sees 5% of the income via income taxes, and another 5% of that "non-taxed" income via realized sales tax purchases of these employees and an average wage of $35k for 1000 future jobs and 500 current jobs, then TX just said good-bye to 5.25 million in tax revenue when Amazon left, and a total of $52 million dollars of wages for citizens in the workforce of the State. Plus the ancillary effects on other businesses supported by those 1500 employees and their incomes.
Something tells me that the $269 million that TX demanded from Amazon is an imposed sales tax on either:
1. All internet sales of Amazon across the US, or;
2. All internet sales of Amazon that were serviced by that one TX distribution center.
Assuming TX has a sales tax of 8%, i have a hard time believing that Amazon did $3,362,500,000 in total sales ($269 million / 0.08 as a sales tax figure) in the state of TX. That makes them doing somewhere in the vicinity of $100-150 billion across the country.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/news/companies/amazon/index.htmAmazon appears to do about 3.5 to 4.0 billion a quarter, internationally. That comes out to approximately $15 billion a year.
Why TX thinks it's entitled to 2% of Amazon's gross sales internationally is a mystery to me.
