As reported earlier this week, the Retail Association of Nevada (RAN) has launched a high-priced PR/lobbying campaign in favor of legislation to force out-of-state online retailers such as Amazon.com and Overstocked.com to smack Nevadans with sales tax on their online purchases.
This is a tax hike on YOU, by the way, not the online retailer…but the online retailer would have to go through the hassle of collecting the tax and remitting it to the state.
In any event, Amazon.com, which operates a fulfillment center in Fernley that employs over a hundred fellow Nevadans, is none to happy about RAN’s attack on behalf of brick-and-mortar retailers such as Wal-Mart and Costco. On Wednesday, the company issued the following brief statement to Reno reporter/blogger Samantha Stone:
“The new tax legislation sought by big box retailers would make us reconsider our pending plans for jobs and investment in Nevada, including in Las Vegas.”
Great. More unemployed; fewer new jobs. Thanks, RAN.
Hmm, if the big box retailers are trying to raise taxes on you and me, maybe it’s time to reconsider Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce’s bill to impose a corporate tax on big box retailers instead?
After all, as our friend Steve Sebelius of the Las Vegas Review-Journal regularly points out – and did so again today on Twitter – the cost of goods at big box stores such as Wal-Mart and Costco in Nevada, where there is no corporate tax, is pretty much the same as neighboring states that DO have a corporate tax.
See what happens when you throw tax hike stones from a glass house?
