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Lawmakers on Friday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a compromise bill that delays California's effort to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect the state's sales taxes while retailers lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes. The compromise between lawmakers, Amazon.com and traditional retailers would delay the expanded online tax collections until at least September 2012. That would give Amazon and other retailers time to lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes.

Amazon Strongly Supports Enactment of Enzi-Durbin-Alexander Federal Online Sales Tax Bill. What Amazon once called unconstitutional, it now calls "win-win." If enacted, the Enzi-Durbin-Alexander bill will allow states to require out of state retailers to collect sales tax at the time of purchase and remit those taxes on behalf of customers, and it will facilitate collection on behalf of third party sellers.

Beginning Friday, Amazon.com and other large out-of-state retailers will be required to collect sales taxes on purchases that their California customers make online.

On Thursday, Governor Quinn signed a measure he called the "Mainstreet Fairness Act," levying a new set of taxes on online retailers. Depending on who you ask, the law, known colloquially as the "Amazon Tax," will be a massive windfall in state revenues, or a set of empty promises that will cause companies to flee the state and revenues to drop.

SACRAMENTO — The days of most tax-free Internet shopping in California are over.

After years of controversy, the world's largest online retailer, Amazon.com Inc., was set to begin collecting state and local sales taxes on California purchases at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. Depending on where you live, sales taxes in the state range from 7.25% to 9.75%.

Amazon.com Inc has taken the first step toward asking California voters to repeal a new law requiring websites that forward shoppers to it to collect sales tax, a spokeswoman for the state's attorney general said on Monday.

Amazon is no fan of collecting state sales taxes, and it's ready to play hardball once again in its attempt to avoid the levy. An e-mail sent from the company to all of its Illinois affiliates this morning warns that, should Illinois Governor Pat Quinn sign a just-passed tax bill, Amazon is cutting off every affiliate in Illinois.

The second most senior Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin, will propose a new scheme that would force online retailers like Amazon and iTunes to collect local taxes for each and every transaction. He’s expected to make the proposal the day after Tax Day, and it’s expected to be controversial within two seconds of having been announced.

At the end of June, a bill will be floated at Capitol Hill, proposing Amazon start collecting sales tax from its customers. Meaning, in essence, that online shopping could become more expensive.