WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump has fired a warning shot at Amazon Inc. over the online retail giant’s practices that are driving thousands of retailers out of business as the company increases its competitive advantage through loopholes.
Chief among those loopholes was Amazon’s failure in the past to collect state sales taxes. Amazon’s record on this issue has improved; it now collects the taxes in all 45 states that have state sales taxes. However, it is collecting them only on its direct sales and not on sales that third-party merchants make through the Amazon website.
