I'm one of those people. Since approximately 1998'ish, I've purchased everything I can on-line to avoid sales tax as I'm a "starve the government beast of revenue" kinda guy.
Until this year, I could literally buy anything on Amazon.Com and not pay sales tax to the State of Illinois. Combined with free shipping and better pricing on Amazon, I saved money, starved the government beast and was happy.
NOW, I have to be very careful when I buy on Amazon to avoid paying sales tax as Amazon agreed to collect State Sales Tax for Illinois. This means purchasing anything on Amazon "fulfilled by Amazon" is subject to a 6.75% Illinois State Sales Tax. This was agreed to by Amazon and the State of Illinois as Amazon is building a fulfillment warehouse center @ 30 minutes from where I live.
Now, I can avoid the sales tax on Amazon if I purchase from the "Amazon Marketplace" which typically still has better prices than purchasing via brick and mortar stores locally, but I pay shipping for those items typically.
As we see Amazon displacing more and more brick and mortar stores and building more fulfillment warehouse centers across the country, the benefits of buying on Amazon are going to become somewhat diminished as those states that charge sales tax will be forcing Amazon to charge it and pass that back to the states. Charging and passing Sales Tax back to the states of course requires additional processing by Amazon (more electronic paperwork, etc..) which will also drive costs up to end consumers as well.
The biggest beneficiary of Amazon charging sales tax in Illinois happens to be stores like Best Buy, HH Gregg and other electronics retailers. They've started matching Amazon's price to make sales and have seen pretty big upticks in business as a result.
I hadn't purchased ANYTHING at Best Buy in over 10 years until recently when I purchased a new Samsung 4k TV there after they not only matched Amazon's price, they lowered the price a little more to match the difference in sales tax too. Illinois State Sales Tax is 6.75%. Counties and municipalities add onto that. To match the price, Amazon had to lower the price to "eat" the additional 2.5% in sales tax that the local county and municipality added, bringing the total sales tax to 9%.
Once Best Buy lowered the price to cover the 2.5% difference in sales tax, it was a slam dunk to buy the TV locally vs. Amazon.
This is exactly what brick and mortar stores are going to need to do to compete with the likes of Amazon.
I wouldn't go around talking too loud about that, since most likely you were required to pay a Use Tax.
It wasn’t too many years ago, as Walmart stores were popping up across the country, that many people, primarily libtards, would hold protests at the new Walmart building sites, decrying how Walmart would bring doom and gloom to all the local mom and pop stores. I still overhear conversations by these same people how they sanctimoniously still won’t shop at Walmart, but then in the same conversation brag about being a ‘member’ of Amazon Prime, how they get such awsome deals, and do so much shopping there.
Also banks are firing all their tellers and rePlacing them with rotating bankers.
The AAA has also fired half their staff.
SOMETHING BAD THIS WAY COMETH!