Alibaba has a U.S. office in California, one of at least two states (NY being the other) known for loving their taxes and not being shy about pursuing them.
Given that, Alibaba not only has an economic nexus, but a physical nexus in that state.
Pragmatically speaking, if AX is so shady, why do so many sellers, and their buyers here, do business with them? There are no shortage of other marketplace options, but I think it’s fair to say that AX still have a big piece of the action.
I too have been shopping Aliexpress for 6 years. I started being charged sales tax October 1, 2019. I live in Tennessee, and from what I understand, I should not be charged sales tax. Do you ever have any sellers refuse to remove the sales tax charge? It wasn’t too long ago that we also started getting charged for shipping too, and it is quite high. The shipping and sales tax charges take a pretty big chunk out of my small business profit. I am going to try to also ask for sales tax to be removed and see what happens. Thanks for posting as I have found little to no information on this topic.
I know that my last ebay purchase from a Chinese company was taxed. 2 separate charges on PP. One for the product and one for the tax. I assume the tax goes to my home state.
eBay warned buyers about two months ago that if they had a state sales tax exemption they needed to register it with eBay or they would be charged sales tax. For me without an exemption, they started charging the 8% Nevada sales tax on 11/1/19. I guess now there is no way to avoid paying it. RATS!
Taxes do bring us things, services we benefit from. I don’t like paying taxes all that much, but I do appreciate the services my local government supplies. Online sales that did not collect and forward taxes cut deeply into the revenue of my small county for many years. We now get some taxes on sales by Amazon and some other online sellers. I do feel that is equitable. I never did buy online tjust to save on taxes, but rather because I could not find the item locally or for the convenience. I do wonder how in the world an online seller like Aliexpress can be trusted to forward any taxes they collect.
I did find an online article that did state that taxes are collected by Aliexpress, for sales that are shipped to Connecticut. District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina Washington. There was no explanation as to the reason those states are taxed but others are not.
EDIT: I originally left out that the collected taxes in places in the last paragraph were for Aliexpress.
TN has no income tax, and some of the lowest property taxes in the nation. They do have a “Hall” tax, which is an income tax on interest and dividends. But I think that is low too.