A few dozen California cities have lucrative deals with retail giants like Apple, Best Buy, and Nike. These deals result in the cities paying millions of dollars from their local tax revenue back to the companies. They’ve also created a state of winner cities, reaping millions of dollars for local projects, and loser cities that see their citizens’ tax dollars go to their neighbors.
It’s all thanks to the outdated Bradley-Burns Uniform Local Sales and Use Tax Law which was designed for 1950s America, well before the internet and e-commerce age. It allows in-state online sales to be assigned to a jurisdiction based solely on the presence of a warehouse. It doesn’t matter where in California the customer lives, or that the company may not even have a store in that city.
In this video, we explore how these deals work and what some city and state lawmakers are hoping to do about it.
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