Interesting story here from Tennessee, a state where Amazon doesn’t collect state sales tax. Buyers are getting an email with a tally of their purchases and a notification that they’re responsible for paying tax. Naturally, the result is mass confusion and outrage:
Internet retailers such as Amazon don’t collect state sales tax on purchases, in effect giving a nearly 10 percent discount instantly to Tennessee shoppers.
But that’s changing. Last week, Amazon started sending emails to customers, letting them know how much money they had spent at the online superstore and that they may owe the government use tax, the online equivalent to sales tax.
Malone hasn’t gotten the email yet — an agreement with the state gives Amazon about two months to send out notices — but he’s sure it’s coming.
It’s still too early to tell whether Amazon’s emails are causing any tax collection increases, but Billy Trout, communications manager for the Tennessee Department of Revenue, said his office has received plenty of calls from taxpayers wondering why they’re getting the email and whether they need to pay the tax.
via Amazon sends out sales tax notices | timesfreepress.com.
The Auctionbytes blog has a fascinating interview with Skip McGrath today. Skip is a longtime eBay and Amazon seller, and also a serious collector of nautical and maritime books.![[Google]]( http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/wp-content/plugins/easy-adsenser/google-light.gif)
Future Nooks will include NFC tech for in-store book scanning
Here is Barnes & Noble’s plan to cut Amazon out of the loop among book shoppers: Turning the Nook ereader into a barcode scanning tool. They’ll make it easy to order copies of paper books by scanning books and displays in your local brick-and-mortar store. Of course, they’re assuming that people will be shopping WITH a Nook, and WITHOUT a Web-enabled phone or tablet. Or a Kindle.
By adding NFC chips into the next generation of Nooks, consumers will be able to take the new Nook into any Barnes & Noble retail location and simply scan any print version of a book to bring up a synopsis as well as customer and editorial reviews. This would allow anyone that’s interested in buying the print version to immediately read feedback about the quality of the book before purchase.
barnes-and-noble-nook-tabletIdeal for Barnes & Noble, this method of purchasing books would cut Amazon out of the research process and dissuade customers from potentially spending money at the rival online bookstore.
Regarding the technology, Lynch stated “We can work with the publishers so they would ship a copy of each hardcover with an NFC chip embedded with all the editorial reviews they can get on BN.com. And if you had your Nook, you can walk up to any of our pictures, any our aisles, any of our bestseller lists, and just touch the book, and get information on that physical book on your Nook and have some frictionless purchase experience. That’s coming, and we could lead in that area.“
via Future Nooks will include NFC tech for in-store book scanning.