Apr 12, 2012

Online sales-tax collection likely, ending a retail edgeBy Jim BrunnerDispatch.com

Columbia, S.C. — When word emerged that Amazon.com Inc. was hunting for warehouse sites, leaders in South Carolina rolled out a welcome mat of tax breaks to lure the Internet retailer.

Officials of the business-friendly Southern state offered more than $33 million in incentives, including free land, a property-tax cut and payroll-tax credits. They even agreed to loosen the area’s Bible Belt moral code, repealing a decades-old “blue law” in Lexington County so that Amazon’s warehouse could stay open on Sunday mornings.

As they discovered, that wasn’t enough.

Amazon also insisted on an exemption from collecting the state’s 6 percent sales tax on purchases by South Carolina residents. When the state Legislature balked, voting down the sales-tax break last spring, Amazon stopped construction on its million-square-foot warehouse and prepared to leave, jeopardizing thousands of expected jobs.

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