Amazon is known throughout the world as one of the most innovative tax cheats anywhere. It makes its profit largely by allowing customers to avoid state sales taxes and sharing the savings. States are now taking steps to crack down on this scam, requiring Internet retailers with any ties to in-state businesses to start collecting taxes on their sales in the state. California took this route this month.

The NYT had an article highlighting Amazon's efforts to fight back to protect its loophole, which includes a plan to place an initiative on California's ballot. In laying out Amazon's argument, the piece includes an unanswered argument from Amazon, that the law places a huge burden on small Internet retailers by requiring them collect taxes in hundreds of different jurisdictions.

The piece should have reminded readers that there are services that will handle the tax collection for smaller businesses for a modest fee. These services are comparable to the payroll companies that small businesses often rely upon to get tax and benefit payments handled correctly.

Amazon has a history of putting out absurd arguments to protect its tax loophole. It had previously argued that it lacked the technical competence to keep track of the different tax provisions in all the jurisdictions where it sold products. This argument was contradicted by the fact that retailers like Wal-Mart and Target seem to have relatively little problem getting tax collections mostly right. Presumably, the programmers at the these traditional brick and mortar retailers are not that much more competent than the crew at Amazon.

Given Amazon's history, the NYT should not present its claims to readers without including a response.