Amazon and Sales Tax

The NYT devoted an article to Amazon's plans for building out its warehouse network and managed to completely avoid any reference to Amazon's efforts to avoid having to collect sales tax. For years Amazon pursued a strategy of trying not to maintain a physical presence in states so that it could argue that it did not have collect sales tax. This effectively gave Amazon an enormous taxpayer subsidy at the expense of conventional retailers.

Jeff Bezos has effectively been handed millions of yea...