Those who buy books from Amazon USA might like to know that Amazon will have to start charging a state-based sales tax in some U.S. states, including California (7.25%) and Pennsylvania (6%), from 15th September 2012.

Small online book retailers are presumably able to escape the requirements of adding such local taxes, because they don’t own distribution or manufacturing facilities scattered across the country. It appears that ebooks will also be exempt in the USA, for now.

Here in the UK we have zero sales tax (VAT) on printed books, newspapers, magazines, maps etc. But perversely we add the full 20% UK sales tax to ebooks.