And other online retailers, don't have to?
Is it still only in states they are physically in? amazon seems to have to collect sales tax from every state now.
california did legislation on it. probably just google that and find out all the info you want.
http://bit.ly/TjnLOF
Because the state and federal governments can affect the bottom line of a company. These entities can literally spend as much time and money as they want passing laws to make the business at Amazon or any other company for that matter more difficult. The alphabet soup of regulatory agencies along with the patent office can really make life difficult and tie up precious executive time in handling this foolishness. And I am certain that the executives at Amazon do not want to put in their annual report that they spent countless millions in legal fees, billions in lost time and hundreds of thousands of customers because they don't want to apply state and local sales taxes.