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It looks like Amazon’s decision to file a lawsuit against New York’s new tax policy on online stores may back fire on them as the Texas Comptroller’s Office is investigating the probability that the online store may actually owe the Texas government millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. If you will recall, in its case against the New York tax policy, Amazon argued that it should not pay the NY government any taxes because it doesn’t have a “physical presence” in New York.

The same reason is now being used by the Texas government as it found out that Amazon has a “physical presence” in the area. Apparently, Amazon has operated a distribution center at 2700 Regent Boulevard in Irving from 2006 to 2007. This was pointed out by the Dallas Morning News when it called Amazon to ask why it is not charging sales taxes to its online customers.

Amazon has not yet issued a statement confirming that it actually owns the distribution center. But if the presence of an Amazon flag outside the building is any indication of ownership, then Amazon may indeed own the distribution center.

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Sections: Web, Websites

Facebook continues to attract third party developers to create their own Facebook applications. What used to be the arena of budding third party developers is also now a place for big web entities. The latest to join the Facebook craze is Amazon with its Amazon Giver and the Amazon Grapevine apps.

From the day it was announced, you could easily predict that the two Amazon applications are heading for big time. Amazon made sure that it has built hype for the release of the two applications, which incidentally are just pretty simple apps. The only difference that the Amazon apps have over other third party Facebook apps is of course the brand name.

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Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Websites