Chip Kidd on Book Design at TED2012

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An article in today’s Auctionbytes, States and Snitches Target eBay Sellers Who Duck Sales Taxes, makes it clear that although much of the recent discussion around online taxes has addressed the ongoing debate over tangled interstate issues, sellers – online and off – are still clearly required to remit the tax on sales within their own state, save for the five states that have no sales tax (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon). What about the many sellers who do not?

Many are simply ignorant of the law, reasoning that they are “too small” to register. But the bar is surprisingly low. In California, for example, “Generally a person who makes three or more sales of merchandise in a 12-month period is considered a retailer and required to hold a seller’s permit. This is true regardless of whether the sales are at retail or for resale or delivered outside California,” said a spokesman for the California BOE.

“A person who sells merchandise in California, even temporarily, is required to register with the BOE and pay tax on their taxable sales. Sales by retailers made through Internet auction houses, such as eBay, are generally subject to California sales tax,” the spokesman added.
Easy enough to forgive. But many are large volume sellers, who simply shirk their tax collecting responsibilities to give themselves a competitive advantage with law-abiding retailers who do collect the tax.

Their days may well be numbered; the new 1099K filings are allowing states to look for discrepancies between sales made and taxes paid.

Remember – it is the customer who owes and pays the tax – it doesn’t come out of your pocket. There are advantages to registering as well – you will be able to buy inventory without paying sales tax.

Want to get legal? You should be able to find all the information that you need here:

IRS Small Business and Self-Employed Web Site

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“21% of Americans have read an e-book. The increasing availability of e-content is prompting some to read more than in the past and to prefer buying books to borrowing them.”

Continued

Here’s an interesting sidenote:

“Amazon’s Kindle Fire, a new tablet computer introduced in late 2011, grew in market share from 5% of the market in mid-December to 14% of the tablet market in mid-January. This change also grew as the overall size of the tablet market roughly doubled.”

And here’s a look at the demographics:

And one at the types of books suited to e-reading:

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