Free Talk Live

The bill would empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. The sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives.

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%.

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.

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.

Prime Minister Mario Monti, in office just over a month, wants landlords, plumbers, electricians and small businesses to stop conducting large transactions in cash, which critics say helps them evade taxes. The government on Dec. 4 reduced the maximum allowed cash payment to 1,000 euros from 2,500 euros. “If they force us to use credit cards, prices will go up,” said d’Andrea, noting that many retailers offer discounts to customers who pay in cash and don’t demand a receipt, in effect splitting with them the savings from evading the country’s 21 percent sales tax.

San Diego City leaders want to slow the increased interest in gold sales and purchases within city limits. All federal legislation is experimented with at the local level first, usually in California, to see how the populace reacts. FDR banned gold in the 1930s. Obama recently banned over-the-counter gold futures, but many people think he won't have the guts to actually seize the physical gold like FDR. When serious inflation hits, the state will get nasty.

Newest version of NDAA seeks to usurp the Supreme Court and impose an Internet sales tax! The Court previously ruled a retailer must have a physical presence in the state to be taxed. Bottom line... Think about it... What is the difference between mail order sales and Internet sales? Just the form the catalog takes. Just because the government doesn't like the decision, they are going to choose to ignore the Court's ruling altogether. We should ignore them in return!

A local family says a language barrier may have resulted in police using a Taser on a woman after she tried to buy too many iPhones at a local mall. Police, however, say the incident isn't that clear cut. Xiaojie Li, of Newton, said she is embarrassed by Monday's Pheasant Lane Mall in New Hampshire incident.