Supreme Court's E-Commerce Ruling Could Help Amazon
Shares of online retailers Wayfair, Overstock, eBay, and Etsy all tumbled Thursday after a landmark decision by the Supreme Court took away one of the key advantages some e-commerce companies had over traditional retailers.
And one of the biggest winners from that ruling, maybe ironically, could be Amazon, said Tom Forte, managing director at research firm D.A. Davidson.
"This now gives Amazon\[, which already collects sales tax,\] insurance against there not being a Jet.com-like start-up using the sales tax advantage against them," he said.
Up until the high court's ruling Thursday, retailers were not required to collect sales tax from consumers unless they had a physical presence in the shopper's state. The loophole sprang out of a 1992 ruling, well before the rise of digital commerce, which specifically applied to mail-order retailers.
That decision did allow for the then-nascent e-commerce industry to grow in the early days of the internet, but Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that it was now outdated.
Subjecting all online retailers to the same rules as brick-and-mortar, though, may not ultimately help the mom-and-pop shops that have struggled most in the shift to online, Forte said, "unless they're a mom-and-pop focused on big ticket items."
"If you could buy a computer at Circuit City for $1,000 and on Amazon for $1,000 and not pay sales tax, it gave you an incentive to buy on Amazon."
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/supreme-court-gives-states-a-win-against-e-commerce).
American citizens in Israel can start leaving the country on charter flights starting Friday after the State Department said flights will take Americans and immediate family members to either Athens, Greece or Frankfurt, Germany.
The Israeli military has ordered the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate to the south within 24 hours as U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey faced a new charge Thursday that he conspired to act as an agent of the Egyptian government, a remarkable accusation against a Democrat who had a powerful role in U.S. policy as head of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.
An Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip would further escalate the war raging since Hamas launched its unprecedented attack, killing hundreds of civilians.
A retired bank official testified that former president Donald Trump obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in loans based on financial statements that have since been deemed fraudulent.
