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Comment by gosub100 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon was successful because for the first 10+ years they paid no sales tax (edit: they exploited interstate laws to enable buyers to circumvent paying sales tax. This was true for eBay as well). This is not competition, in fact it's the opposite. thats nothing revolutionary. In fact, 'exploitative' is the adjective that comes to my mind (which coincidentally, also applies to his laborers)

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> Amazon was successful because for the first 10+ years they paid no sales tax

Quite a history revision.

1. Businesses do not pay sales tax - customers do. No online webstore collected taxes until recently. That was not something special for Amazon...

2. The business employs hundreds of thousands of people. All of which pay taxes. Even if the business itself literally paid zero dollars in taxes (lol), it is responsible for millions of dollars of taxes every month via payroll and employees buying things.

3. More taxes is not inherently better. What is up with people demanding more taxes be paid to the black hole that is the government?

This idea that businesses don't pay taxes and therefore are bad is totally naïve.

what I meant was they sold goods across state lines, which absolved _buyers_ of paying sales tax. I will edit my original comment to clarify.

100% of online webstores enjoyed the very same "benefit".

I am disputing your assertion that Amazon was successful because of this. By that logic, all online webstores would be Amazon today... yet, there's only one Amazon.

In fact, the recent changes to online sales tax collection have places a significant burden on smaller online webstores. You now need a 3rd party service to calculate taxes for the gazzilion tax jurisdictions all across the US. In some cases you have to guess if you meet the minimum thresholds for collecting taxes in certain states. The entire thing is a mess.

Regardless, nobody is not purchasing online because they have to pay sales tax. Amazon's early appeal was being able to buy darn near any book and it was delivered to your house a few days later. No longer were you limited to the inventory of your local Barnes & Noble, etc.

The sales tax loophole made eBay and PayPal into mega corporations as well, especially at various times over the past 2 decades. At one point in time Amazon was growing because of book sales. That era is long gone. Their business model is one of exploitation. Of both employees, local governments, and to some extent their own customers due to their lack of action against counterfeit merchandise sellers.

> The sales tax loophole made eBay and PayPal into mega corporations as well

Your logic is severely flawed, as previously pointed out. Every single webstore that existed back then would be the size of eBay, PayPal, Amazon, etc. Yet, very few are.

The lack of tax collection by a webstore has absolutely nothing to do with a couple examples of extreme success.

Perhaps you should consider the companies you are using as examples. What sets them apart from the countless smaller, less successful companies out there? They were the first to do something new that literally changed the world. Online auctions from anywhere in the world, online payments from anyone to anyone, virtually unlimited product inventory and choices, etc. That is why those companies are huge - not because they didn't collect taxes for some state a customer lived in.

> Their business model is one of exploitation.

Again, fundamentally flawed logic. As an employee, you literally sell your labor/time in exchange for money. You literally have the power to choose how much you are willing to sell your labor/time for. This fictitious narrative of exploitation requires quite a mental leap and assumption people have zero other options but to work for $COMPANY.

If you worked for Amazon and felt you were underpaid - quit and get a different job. It's literally that simple.

You're reaching to suggest that lack of sales tax was a reason that customers used Amazon. Like the sibling comment mentions, every other e-commerce site or platform had the same advantage.

The reason customers used Amazon was because it was easy and fast, not because you didn't have to pay sales tax. I used it extensively even back then, and sales tax was literally never a factor.

for 2, why would you ascribe that to the business and not the employees?

Because the business is the one that created the jobs, not the employee. The employee is selling their labor to the company in exchange for money - and that exchange of money is taxed by the government.

The more jobs a business can create and pay for, the more tax money gets funneled into the black pit we call the government.

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