Will The Amazon Sales Tax Lead To An Epidemic?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

The Amazon tax, as it being called, is back in the news again. If you haven’t heard, several states have attempted to tax sales on Amazon and a couple have succeeded. I’ll go on the record and say that if this becomes a widespread issue and the majority of states end up taxing Amazon sales then it will kill online book sales. It will also probably lead to a diminishing of online business in general.

Amazon affiliates don’t make a lot of money. On books the commission is something like 4%. Yes, they can make up to 10% on other items that deliver a pretty good commission, and many Amazon affiliates focus their efforts on those. But if affiliates have to fork over their hard-earned dollars to state government in taxes then it will be discouraging to new affiliates and lead to less enthusiasm and fewer web pages being built to promote the products.

The sadder thing is this: States that see increased revenues from the Amazon tax will likely be encouraged to implement other online sales taxes. Are we going to see an epidemic?