Contact Attorney Richard Keyt: 480-664-7478|rk@keytlaw.com

Amazon Fights States Over Sales Tax

Tax Prof Blog: Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest online retailer, hasn’t charged sales tax in most states since its founding in 1994. And it has taken some extreme measures to keep it that way.

Among them: Staff traveling around the U.S. have been required to first consult a company map that shades each state red, yellow or green, said three people who have worked for the retailer. These people said they needed permission from managers or company lawyers before entering “red” states because a worker’s actions might trigger laws that force Amazon to collect taxes in those states.

Such steps to avoid local levies allow Amazon to undercut in-state retailers by the amount they must add in sales tax, which can exceed 8%.

A close examination of Amazon’s corporate practices, based on interviews with more than a dozen former employees and people who have done business with the Seattle company, as well as a review of corporate documents, indicates that the company believes its sales-tax policy is critical to its performance.

Debt Deal Eliminates Graduate School Loan Subsidies

USA Today:  A federal subsidy that aids graduate students would be eliminated to boost funding for Pell grants that help low-income undergraduates, under the compromise debt-ceiling bill moving through Congress.  That trade-off is one of the few program changes specified in the bill.

The maximum Pell grant of $5,550 would be preserved for an estimated 9 million undergraduates, according to the White House.

To pay for that, graduate students who get federally subsidized loans would see the interest on those loans begin to accrue while they’re still in school, beginning July 1 next year. Currently, that interest doesn’t begin accruing until the students graduate. That saves lots of money for doctoral candidates, medical school students, law students and others in long-term graduate programs.

 

Does the GOP Really Love The 10th Amendment?

Reason.com:  The 10th Amendment to the Constitution is like the skinny teenage girl who blossoms over the summer and suddenly finds herself besieged by suitors. Once ignored, it has found a host of champions among Republican presidential candidates who are competing to show their devotion.

The amendment contains just one sentence: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

It is a bulwark of federalism, which allows states the freedom to adopt different policies reflecting their peculiar circumstances. It was meant as a check on those who would demand uniform practices from one end of America to the other.

NALP Unhappy About ABA Decision To Collect More Information From Law Schools

ABA Journal:  The ABA’s latest plan for collecting more detailed employment and placement information about law school graduates has created a rift with the National Association for Law Placement.

Under the new plan, the ABA would collect the data directly from the schools rather than rely on NALP to collect and process the information on its behalf, as it originally planned to do.

Hulett “Bucky” Askew, the ABA’s consultant on legal education, said Tuesday the executive committee of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which accredits law schools, felt the ABA should obtain the information directly from the schools.

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