Amazon to collect Louisiana sales tax, January 2017
- Dec 20, 2016 | Gail Cole
Louisianans coveting big-ticket items may want to shop Amazon before the clock strikes midnight on December 31. Once 2017 arrives, Amazon.com will charge sales tax on items shipped to Louisiana.
A spokesperson for the online retail giant told WSDU that “Amazon will begin collecting sales tax in Louisiana on January 1, 2017.” The Louisiana Department of Revenue has confirmed that the company will collect and remit both state and local sales taxes “based on the address of the purchaser.”
This is an about face for the ecommerce king. When Louisiana imposed a new internet sales tax (click-through and affiliate nexus) on April 1, 2016, Amazon responded by ejecting Louisiana residents from its Associates Program so it wouldn’t trigger nexus (an obligation to collect tax) in The Pelican State. Associates received an email from Amazon informing them that “residents of Louisiana will no longer be eligible to participate in the Program” because of “the recent enactment of tax legislation.”
But since then, Amazon has started collecting tax in Alabama and Washington, D.C., bringing the number of states where it charges tax to 29, plus the District of Columbia. And the list of areas where Amazon collects tax is growing — the company revealed earlier this month that would collect tax in Utah and Iowa as of January 1, 2017.
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