September 05, 2011, 8:16 PM — Amazon is battling it out with California's Jerry Brown. Amazon promises to add seven thousand jobs to California's payroll if Brown looks the other way in some opportunistic way, at taxing Amazon's sales. Indeed, if you do a whois of boycottamazon.com, you'll see that Amazon's legal department has swiped that name in an early defense to contain the outrage of such moves (and any other boycott reason you'd like to choose).
Amazon has without qualm, moved its organization out of states that try to force it to charge sales tax. This removes nexus, or the ability for Amazon to be counted for purposes of sales taxation. It gives Amazon anywhere from zero to as much as ten percent savings over buying something locally — with local sales taxes added on to the bottom line of the receipt.
No one argues that Amazon needs this discount, as while it has interesting shipping programs available, Amazon doesn't have a bricks-and-mortar retail presence. The catalog of merchandise is huge at Amazon, made larger still by a large number of storefronts allied under Amazon's marketing engines. In some cases, those storefronts, where an ostensible nexus could be established, meant that the storefronts from those states had to go away —else Amazon might be sales taxed there because of the address of its actual reseller.
At this writing, Governor Brown is resisting. If you try to resist, however, by starting something like boycottamazon.com, you'll find this whois entry:
MarkMonitor is the Global Leader in Enterprise Brand Protection.
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Corporate Consulting ServicesVisit MarkMonitor at www.markmonitor.com
Contact us at 1 800 745 9229
In Europe, at +44 (0) 20 7840 1300The Data in MarkMonitor.com's WHOIS database is provided by MarkMonitor.com for information purposes, and to assist persons in obtaining information about or related to a domain name registration record. MarkMonitor.com does not guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this Data only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this Data to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail (spam); or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to MarkMonitor.com (or its systems). MarkMonitor.com reserves the right to modify these terms at any time. By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy.
Registrant:
Hostmaster, Amazon Legal Dept.
Amazon Technologies, Inc.
P.O. Box 8102
Reno NV 89507
US
hostmaster@amazon.com +1.2062664064 Fax: +1.2062667010
And your protests will need another, more creative domain name to find a way to send or rally your protests against Amazon, if the deal doesn't sound right to you. You'll need to do better than AmazonSucks.com and AmazonBoycott.com-- Amazon controls those domains, too.
