The Haines Borough collected $14,731 in online sales tax revenue from January through March 31 this year, from online vendors Amazon, Netflix, Overstock.com, and SlingTV, said Jila Stuart, the borough’s chief fiscal officer.

These are the first figures for online sales tax revenue in Haines, which had not been collected before January of this year. Online sales tax revenue was about 3 percent of total sales tax revenue. It made less revenue than any other sales tax category. Retail sales tax is the lion’s share, about 32 percent of total sales tax revenue, or $152,536.

Since the beginning of 2019, Amazon has been collecting local sales tax due a U.S. Supreme Court decision that online retailers have a presence like local retailers. The court decision made online retailers responsible for collecting and remitting local sales tax.

This week, the borough assembly codified the sales tax, passing an ordinance to collect taxes from certain online retailers.

“We added the online sales tax category recently, because Amazon began collecting sales tax on (top of) municipal sales tax,” said Stuart.

In terms of how the new sales tax would affect Haines shoppers, she said, “People who were buying things on Amazon previously and weren’t paying tax may pay tax now. But it seems like it creates more of a level playing field between Amazon and the brick and mortar places in town. There’s both positives and negatives.”

At that time, local business owners Doug Olerud and Mike Ward were both in support of the sales tax, saying that gave Amazon an unfair advantage. Ward said that “Amazon received a 5.5 percent sales tax advantage.”

“That’s $15,000 in revenue coming into the borough,” Olerud said when he heard about the tax revenue, but “I thought it would be higher. It would be interesting to see if it’s kind of in line with seasonal sales trends,” he said.

“I thought it would be more. I’m not saying I’m disappointed, I just thought it would be double that,” said Ward. “I just hope that my assumption was wrong, that there were not as many sales as I thought,” he said.

Asked whether or not she considered the online sales tax revenue significant, Stuart said, “You can look at the numbers and determine for yourself. I think it’s significant.”