With the economy slowing and tax revenues decreasing, all levels of U.S. Government are ramping up their efforts to get a piece of the e-commerce taxation pie. Forrester Research states an additional 3 billion dollars could be generated for government coffers if companies begin to collect taxes instead of relying on the buyer to self report and pay duties on Internet purchases. Generally speaking companies only have to collect taxes if the purchaser lives in a state where the business has a physical presence, but states like New York are suing companies like Amazon.com (has no offices in New York) in an attempt to force them to collect taxes on all shipments to the state. Amazon.com is currently complying and collecting taxes, but is also counter suing New York State arguing that this type of forced taxation is unconstitutional.
Great coverage of this ordeal can be found at E-Commerce Times
BOTTOM LINE: What should call centers take away from this? If your organization is using a clients’ website to place orders, the affects of any changes should be minimal, with the onus for any shopping cart/taxation rule changes falling on your clients. But if your call center has setup an internal shopping cart to facilitate order taking or order gathering for some of your clients, there could very well be a lot of IT work needed to make all the changes required to cover any new taxation rules. For example: “Collecting online sales taxes is not as simple as it might sound. A nationwide Internet business faces thousands of tax-collecting jurisdictions — states, counties and cities — and tangled rules about how various products are taxed.(E-Commerce Times)”
This is definitely something all of us who are in the industry need to keep our eyes on…
