California hits Philly-area Amazon seller with $1.6 million sales-tax bill
Brian Freifelder, who sells clothing, shoes, and groceries on Amazon.com out of a small warehouse in Bensalem, is caught in what his tax lawyer called “an interstate commerce speed trap.”
The 36-year-old Bucks County resident recently received a jaw-dropping notice from California that he could owe as much as $1.6 million for sales tax that he didn’t collect from consumers who bought his goods through Amazon.
That’s just for the first six months of this year.
“It’s absurd. I haven’t sold enough inventory over time to warrant a tax bill like that. You could take every sale I’ve ever done. You could take the biggest sellers on Amazon, and I don’t think they would have a bill like that. They’re trying to scare people,” Freifelder said last week.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/its-bonkers-california-hits-philly-area-amazon-seller-with-dollar16-million-sales-tax-bill/ar-AAJSQ9Z?li=BBnb7Kz
I don't know about the last paragraph but it will be interesting to see how much he sold.
I believe I've usually paid sales tax on my Amazon purchases but that may be because I live in Washington State where Amazon is based.
= new reply since forum marked as read
(and yet I'm feeling this guy's pain) is that Philadelphia used to have a master scam where they'd send "parking tickets" throughout the state to collect on "alleged" violations. We used to have to go to a notary to get a "statement" showing that we'd never, or at least, on the stated date, been in or near the Philadelphia area.
So, what we used to do (and it now seems to be an "Executive Branch Policy" ) - ignore the request (subpoena) and hope that it would all go away! 