
Article snippet: President Trump may not have meant to, but on Wednesday he seemed to endorse a longer reach for the tax collector. In an angry tweet directed at Amazon, Mr. Trump chastised the e-commerce giant for “not paying internet taxes (which they should).” At the moment, there is no “internet tax,” and it is not clear exactly what the president might have had in mind. (The comment was interpolated in a declaration about “The #AmazonWashingtonPost.” Mr. Bezos owns The Washington Post, which has published articles critical of Mr. Trump; Amazon is a separate company.) The White House did not elaborate. But one possibility is that Mr. Trump was thinking of a proposal to allow state governments to force internet retailers to collect sales taxes from their customers. The bill — called the Marketplace Fairness Act — has been pushed for years by brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart, which have been losing ground as e-commerce has grown. The bill passed the Senate in 2013, 69 to 27, with bipartisan support. It was reintroduced by a similar coalition in April but faces opposition from House Republicans. If Mr. Trump was implying that Amazon had failed to add taxes where they were due, he was mistaken. The company long balked at collecting sales taxes, but by 2012 it was collecting taxes in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and other states. It even joined its former opponents that year in lobbying Congress to pass federal legislation that would compel its online competitors to foll... Link to the full article to read more