Now that Amazon is being forced to collect sales tax in New York, effective 1 June 2008, I’m going to have to do my shopping elsewhere. It really is a shame. I’m aware that people are supposed to report the online sales taxes themselves, but I don’t think anyone really does that. Hell, I wasn’t even aware that I was supposed to until I read about the possibility of Amazon charging tax before this became official. It looks to me that I’m going to be going on a spending binge on Amazon before June comes rolling up.

I’m glad that I recently was able to purchase six Moleskine journals at a relatively low price: $12 a book, compared to roughly $15-$18 most of the time. They’re expensive to use as notebooks for use in a college classroom, but I care more about the quality and functionality. Right now there is only one left in stock, so I may purchase more when they come back in stock.

I’m no legal expert, but I do know I would like to save as much of what I have in my wallet as I can, so I hope that somehow Amazon will fight and win this new taxation. Their prices may be lower most of the time, but now the savings between brick and mortar retailers and Amazon.com will become more negligible. That provides me with less motivation to purchase from Amazon. In fact, I may be going back to eBay. At one point I was willing to pay slightly higher prices on Amazon (as opposed to eBay) for reliable delivery and accountability of the merchandise. But now I will have to rethink thing.Aw what the hell, who am I kidding. I still have an Amazon Prime subscription. I’ll probably still buy from them.