Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Roger: You all know about paying sales tax. Every time we go to some place to buy something
there's this huge sales tax, which will vary actually between cities and counties that
I even forget what it is in San Diego City but it's like 8% plus. But, now the Feds will
pick this up because there's where a whole lot of businesses on the internet who may
or may not be collecting sales tax given the situation that they're particularly in and
the question is, is it fair to require everybody selling on the internet to get their customers
to pay the same sales tax as if they had a store in that customer's area? Well, we'll
find out from some people feel very strongly about this because they sell a lot of stuff
on the internet.
This is Dara Greaney. He's president of Sorrento Valley-based BuyAutoParts.com sort of a similar
business Dara, welcome.
Dara: Thank you.
Roger: How big is your business?
Dara: We will do about 40 million in 2013
Roger: And you're selling to the whole world.
Dara: Whole world.
Roger: I mean, I don't even know if you have any idea when people send an order form. I
guess you do. Get a track a word with your customer.
Dara: We track of which state it is and some of the international business that we do.
Roger: Okay. Now, do you pay sales tax? You collect sales tax from any of your customers
now?
Dara: Only in the state of California.
Roger: Because you're here in the state of California. But I think, Dara, the legislation
says, we'll going to give you some free software. Don't worry about it. It's just a matter of
the computer being able to say, okay, you're in Kansas. Therefore, you ought to be paying
whatever that percentage is and then you tag it on and it's no big deal, right?
Dara: Wish it was that easy. But we know how the government works. We know it's much more
complex to do the compliance on it.
Roger: You don't think it's all bad though.
Dara: I don't think it's all bad. I mean, we know a lot California customers look out
of states as opposed to buying from us. And so, if those customers can...
Roger: Then they save the sales tax.
Dara: They save the sales tax.
Roger: Which is huge in this state?
Dara: Right. If you look at our numbers, like I ran the numbers and on a per population
based, California is our 12th best state, even though we have local deliveries and all
that southern California business. We're still number 12, where Nevada and Arizona are 1
and 2.
Roger: What is this law going to do to your business?
Dara: We're in a size that we think we can handle the compliance. We don't think that's
going to be affected. We're going to have to make some changes and that, we're going
to have to open multiple distribution points to take advantage of it, to be closer the
customer, to compete better with the brick and mortars which we're prepared to do.