RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina tax collectors have settled a privacy lawsuit and agreed not to ask Amazon.com or other online retailers to reveal specifics about Internet purchases made by North Carolina residents.
The N.C. Department of Revenue signed the agreement with the ACLU in January as part of a broader lawsuit filed last year against this state by Amazon, the online retailing giant.
The revenue department and the N.C. attorney general released the settlement this week.
The state tax agency has been asking Amazon to turn over customer names so that the state could charge the customers sales tax for their online purchases. Amazon has made nearly 50 million sales to North Carolina customers from 2003 to 2010, most of which are presumed not to have had the 7.75 percent sales tax levied on them.
The ACLU, a nonprofit civil rights advocacy group, and Seattle-based Amazon contended that North Carolina’s information request was illegal because it would have linked customers to items they purchased, revealing the names of books, DVDs and other products.
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