Why is Amazon winning? It’s not Sales Tax. It’s because Amazon is doing everything they can to combine their great selection with getting your purchases to you as fast as possible. That patent going around for predictive shipping is being reported so terribly. People keep focusing on getting something at your house you didn’t order. That’s not the real point of the patent. Figures 4A-4C of Patent No. 8,615,473 B2 demonstrate the real goal. They want to get items that are likely to be ordered into the networks of their package carriers, down to the local hub or first three digits of ZIP code, then slap on the address of a specific person who did order it, and get the item to the person insanely fast.
I know I’ve harped on this a lot, but it really is a shame that people in favor of sales tax changes have made this all about sticking it to Amazon, because there are legitimate tax reasons to favor taxing interstate purchases. Preserving sales tax revenue that used to be there means not having to raise or implement income taxes in order to get the same revenue per capita.
By the way, Healthcare.gov is horribly, horribly insecure.