After reading on David Streitfeld's article on the New York Times on Amazon's efforts to avoid collecting sales tax in California (as well as other states), I was thinking about the importance of this refusal on independent bookstores.
The problem? "Any Californian who buys a book or a DVD player from Amazon is supposed
to pay a use tax when filing state taxes. In practice, however, few do." And Bill Dombrowski,
head of the California Retailers Association, adds "Amazon is
killing our business in bricks-and-mortar stores."
I believe Amazon's refusal to collect sales tax is wrong and immoral, but is it really killing indie bookstores? I decided to check it out.
I heard yesterday a great book review of Maureen Corrigan on "The Submission" by Amy Waldman and decided to check what happens if I live in Novato, California and want to purchase this book. For my unscientific experiment I compared an online order from three independent bookstores located in San Francisco (The Booksmith, City Lights Books, Green Apple Bookstore) and an online order from Amazon.
| Amazon | City Lights | Booksmith | Green Apple | ||
| Book price | 13.68 | 26 | 26 | 27 | |
| Shipping | 3.99 | 10 | 8 | 5.9 | |
| Tax | 0 | 2.21 | 2.21 | 2.3 | |
| Total | 17.67 | 38.21 | 36.21 | 35.2 | |
| Sales tax as part of the difference between the store and Amazon: | |||||
| 11% | 12% | 13% | |||
Bottom line: What kills indie bookstores is the fact that Amazon sells books in half price and provides much cheaper shipping. Not the sales tax. Even if Amazon will start paying sales tax tomorrow (and they definitely should), indie books are still going to be in trouble with such a difference in costs.
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Raz @ Eco-Libris
1 comment:
This reasoning might be alright if people view a book as a mere commodity, like buying a spatula or belt, when in fact the place from which you buy a book matters greatly. A good independent bookstore functions as a community hub for book culture, very specific to it's unique locale. Fortunately many people value that as an asset to their family and community and are willing to support their local indie bookstore. I agree that it's about more than the tax issue.
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