Amazon Takes Tax Fight to Supreme Court

It is perhaps the one remaining venue where Jeff Bezos has yet to emerge victorious: the Supreme Court. Now, he could even prove dominant there.

Amazon petitioned the nation’s highest court on Wednesday to hear its challenge against a 2008 New York State law that requires online retailers to collect sales tax. The company has hired famed Washington, D.C., attorney Ted Olson to represent it.

The online sales tax issue is maddeningly complex, and it is muddied even further by the fact that Amazon has already agreed to collect sales taxes in many states, including New Jersey and California. Bezos has also repeatedly made plain his support for a federal law called the Marketplace Fairness Act, currently stalled in the House of Representatives, which would require all online retailers to collect and remit sales tax. Read more...