This is an apples-to-oranges comparison between use tax collection in Q1/Q2 vs. Q3/Q4 with anecdotes about companies that weren't even paying use tax before leaving the state. Put short, all of the arguments people are making here or are being made in the article need to look at whether the actual "tax revenues" (which the title erroneosly claims to be looking at) dropped due to /income tax/ changes from companies leaving the state and it needs to take into account that different parts of the year are going to have drastically different behaviors.<p>This is especially true given that use tax is almost entirely, without this law, paid by end users as part of income tax collection, and so trying to break revenues down by month is inane: not everyone bothers filing estimated payments, especially if they are part of a payroll system that does withholding for them. They are going to report use tax once during the year, and it is going to be in April.
This reminds me of Record/Movie industries' "belief" that piracy robs them of billions of revenue. No. If some magical perfect anti-piracy field was in place the vast majority of people not paying for your crap would still be not paying for your crap. That money doesn't exist.<p>Same here, inventing new taxes doesn't increase taxes (that much). It increases the incentive and energy expended on finding ways to avoid your new tax.
Two thoughts: 1. This news makes me very happy. 2. Most states don't have the economic clout that would make a retailer like Amazon hurt more from the loss of their affiliates than they would by charging sales tax. It's not only the potential loss of revenue they might incur if sales taxes were no longer part of the price comparison between local and internet sales, it's the huge, possibly inestimable, cost of complying with the wacky tax codes rates set by random politicians in every dinky municipality, county and state, which change faster than leaves fall in an Autumn windstorm. If Illinois wants to squeeze more tax revenue out of its citizens, let it join with other states and demand a single, uniform, federal sales tax. Until then, lotsa luck.
Before the tea party goes overboard here, consider in the long run what the implications of Amazon not collecting sales taxes might mean. As ecommerce becomes a greater and greater share of all commerce, states would all collect less sales tax. Which means either less services, or more sales tax on non-ecommerce businesses, or more income taxes. To cheer Amazon for avoiding its fair share is to be just as blind to consequences as the article accuses the legislators of being.
My state, North Carolina is one of the states that has this law as well and as a result Amazon pulled out of here too. I hope they take notice of this and get rid of it.
There was at least one more coupon site that also left the state as a result of the tax, so in addition to the 50 jobs cited in the article, Illinois lost more jobs (and presumably additional tax revenue with them).