How Amazon’s Same-Day Delivery Plan Will Kill Your Local StoresS

For years, Amazon has fought to avoid having to collect sales tax in order to keep its prices low. Now, though, it's given up on that that battle and instead looks set to launch a same-day delivery service—and that could destroy local retail as we know it.

Farhad Manjoo has put together a wonderfully insightful essay over at Slate which explores the impact Amazon's new strategy will have. To give some perspective, Amazon's decision to accept sales tax as inevitable means it can change its play. To avoid sales tax in the past, it had a handful of large distribution centers. Now it's set to charge sales tax, it can legally set up smaller distribution centers in any state. In turn, that in theory means it'll be able to ship products inside of the same day. As Manjoo points out, that would be incredibly disruptive:


Whether Amazon can pull it off, of course, remains to be seen—and to gauge for yourself you should read the Slate feature—but it seems likely. After all, as Manjoo points out, if it can ship items cross-country overnight, it sure as hell should be able to get them across-state inside a day. And at that point, you can kiss your local stores goodbye. [Slate]