Currently, Amazon doesn't require consumers in many states to pay sales tax. If cash-starved state and federal lawmakers have their way, however, Amazon could soon lose that key advantage over its
brick-and-mortar rivals. Later this month, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to introduce a bill, dubbed the Main Street Fairness Act, which would require all businesses to collect sales
tax in the state where the consumer resides, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
Originally meant to support and nurture a fledgling online industry, there's a growing sense among state
and federal lawmakers that the online sales-tax reprieve constitutes an advantage that Amazon, with a reported 90 million customers and $34 billion in annual sales, no longer needs. "This idea is
overdue," Durbin tells Bloomberg Businessweek. "Online retail sales are now very fulsome and are growing at the expense of local units of government."