Free Talk Live

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn defended a massive increase in state income taxes passed by lawmakers Wednesday and promised to quickly sign the measure to help heal the state's ailing finances.

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.

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.

“The ISRA has learned from a credible source that Illinois Senate President John Cullerton [above] will introduce a so called ‘assault weapons’ ban on Wednesday when the legislature returns for its ‘lame duck’ session. Cullerton hopes to ramrod the bill through and get it to Governor Quinn for signature by Friday. If he is successful at doing so, nearly every gun you currently own will be banned and will be subject to confiscation by the Illinois State Police..."

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 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.

Memos distributed to state employees Tuesday say Gov. Pat Quinn has made a “final decision” to close prisons in Dwight and Tamms, a youth facility in Murphysboro and inmate transition centers in Carbondale and Decatur. The one-page letter distributed to workers at the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Department of Juvenile Justice say the facilities will be shuttered by Aug. 31. Speaking Tuesday night, Dwight Mayor Bill Wilkey said the closures appear to target downstate facilities. “As you can see, there’s no Chicago facilities that are in that (announcement),” Wilkey said.

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.