Free Republic

Obama signs bill restricting mail-order cigarette sales WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday signed legislation that bans the U.S. Postal Service from shipping cigarettes — a measure that's expected to cripple the mail-order tobacco businesses run by members of the Seneca Nation of Indians. White House press secretary Robert L. Gibbs announced the signing in a brief statement that included no comment on the new law, which the Senecas fought furiously. In response, Seneca Nation President Barry E. Snyder Sr. accused the president of betraying the very Indian nations he wooed during his 2008 campaign and spoke to last fall....

By Jerry Zremski NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF WASHINGTON — The Senate late Thursday unanimously passed a bill that could devastate the Seneca Nation's mail-order cigarette business, voting to ban the U.S. Postal Service from mailing tobacco products. The Senate's sudden and bipartisan passage of the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act thrilled anti-smoking advocates while infuriating the Senecas, who say the bill could threaten as many as 1,000 jobs in Western New York. The Senate passed the bill as part of its routine legislative work at the end of Thursday's session. The House in May passed a slightly different version...

Amazon’s move to drop its Colorado associates so soon after Gov. Ritter signed a new law creating a so-called “Amazon tax” is regrettable – but not shocking. There were plenty of signals that repealing a tax exemption for online retailers would face legal challenges and possibly just such a move as Amazon launched today. The Post editorial board was among critics who warned the new law looked awfully problematic for such little gain . John Hickenlooper missed a golden opportunity in not weighing in on this tax. Score one for McInnis. Suddenly he looks like the prescient one while Denver’s...

Internet sellers who don't report their sales will no longer be under the radar. Starting next year, any bank or other payment settlement company that processes credit cards, debit cards, and electronic payments such as PayPal will have to issue information returns telling the IRS what merchants receive. The new returns are Form 1099-K, Merchant Card and Third-Party Payments. Purpose of Reporting The IRS believes that many online sellers fail to report their transactions. Some don't report because they mistakenly believe that Internet sales are invisible. Others do so because they are trying to evade taxes. The IRS has found...

DENVER – Amazon.com Inc. cut ties Monday with Colorado online businesses that help it sell products because of a new state law aimed at getting out-of-state, online retailers to collect sales tax. The move hurts businesses — many of them small, home-based operations — that earn money by using their Web sites and blogs to link customers to online retailers. Colorado has at least 4,200 such businesses, known as affiliates or associates, accounting for about 5,000 jobs, and most of them rely on Amazon to some degree, according to their trade group, the Performance Marketing Association. The group's executive director,...

Legislation requiring online retailers to collect Virginia's 4.5 percent sales tax -- the so-called "Amazon Bill" -- easily cleared the Virginia Senate this morning and is headed to the House of Delegates, where opponents hope it falls prey to that chamber's hostility to taxes. Senate Bill 660, by Republican Emmett W. Hanger Jr. of Augusta, was approved, 28-12. The measure is a priority among traditional, bricks-and-mortar retailers, who say they can't compete with online businesses that currently don't have to collect the tax on Virginia sales. Foes say the legislation is a jobs-killer; that it would force Internet businesses here...

...To see how much these items cost, shoppers must add the merchandise to their shopping carts — in effect, taking it up to the virtual register for a price check... In many cases that freedom stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS. The ruling gave manufacturers considerably more leeway to dictate retail prices, once considered a violation of antitrust law, and it set a high legal hurdle for retailers to prove that this is bad for consumers. ...retailers say manufacturers have become increasingly aggressive with one tool in particular: forbidding...

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled Monday that New York City couldn't use federal racketeering laws to sue out-of-state Internet tobacco retailers that don't file reports on city residents who buy cigarettes online. The city wants the reports so it can collect cigarette taxes directly from residents who purchased tobacco products online. The retailers aren't required to collect the taxes. The case before the high court centered on New York's allegations that New Mexico-based online retailer Hemi Group committed racketeering offenses of mail and wire fraud by allegedly failing to submit reports on its New York City customers to state tobacco administrators....

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As one of his first moves upon becoming CEO, eBay chief John Donahoe unveiled a slew of changes to the online marketplace, kicking off an uproar among sellers and sparking boycotts. Two years later, eBay is finally starting to see signs of success on its turnaround plan. The San Jose, Calif., e-commerce giant on Wednesday reported 2009 sales of $8.7 billion, up from $8.5 billion in 2008. That's a 14% increase from the $7.7 billion in revenue eBay had in 2007, the year before Donahoe's overhaul. EBay's profits, though, haven't kept pace with its sales growth....

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

As the media landscape continues to skew to online from print, more news outlets may feel financial pressure to test just how much readers care about professional credentials. Looking into the media furor over swine flu last spring, I interviewed a UCLA epidemiologist, who told me it was best to assume "a posture of humility" in trying to assess how deadly the H1N1 virus would be. "This is a virus we haven't seen before," said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley. "We don't really know what will happen." I've thought often in recent months about those words, which just as easily might be...

Wal-Mart starts selling caskets, urns online By EMILY FREDRIX, AP Retail Writer Wed Oct 28, 4:03 pm ET MILWAUKEE – The world's largest retailer wants to keep its customers even after they die. Wal-Mart has started selling caskets on its Web site at prices that undercut many funeral homes, long the major seller of caskets. The move follows a similar one by discount rival Costco, which also sells caskets on its site. Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., quietly put up about 15 caskets and dozens of urns on its Web site last week. Prices range from $999 for models like...

Online spending down as holiday season nears Recession puts brakes on fast-paced growth of e-commerce By Ylan Q. Mui Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 24, 2009 Online retail's runaway growth has hit a wall as consumers have cut back on the discretionary spending that drives the industry's sales. According to research firm comScore, e-commerce sales have been steadily declining this year, with spending not including travel dropping 2 percent in the third quarter. That has set the stage for a tough holiday season, which can account for as much as half of annual sales. "It's not pretty at all...

Time Inc. is gathering U.S. magazine publishers to start a jointly run digital newsstand next year that would deliver their titles to mobile devices like increasingly popular electronic book readers. ---------------- snippity snip ------------------------

The Boston Globe will soon begin charging for its Web site, publisher P. Steven Ainsley told the paper’s union bosses yesterday as the Globe’s parent New York Times [NYT] Co. confirmed in a regulatory filing that the money-losing Hub broadsheet is for sale. News of the Globe’s intention to charge for Boston.com came a day after News Corp. [NWS] Chairman Rupert Murdoch announced his company would start charging for content at all of its news Web sites, including the New York Post, The Times of London and The Sun, a popular British tabloid. News Corp. already charges for some access...

Media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape. News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch told analysts in a conference call after News Corp released its full year results that the traditional newspaper business model has to change. "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution," Mr Murdoch said. "But it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites," he said. He said News Corp would use the Wall...

MURDOCH: 'WE PLAN TO CHARGE FOR ALL OF OUR NEWS SITES'... 'WE WILL START CHARGING FOR FOXNEWS.COM'... Q. WILL YOU SHUT DOWN ANY OF YOUR NEWSPAPERS?' A. 'ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE... BUT NO PLANS FOR IT' FOXNEWS PROFIT 50% HIGHER THAN LAST YEAR... VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR NEW JAMES CAMERON FILM...

States across the U.S. have been taking a harder line against an old problem -- cigarette smuggling -- as part of the widening search for solutions to their budget problems. States including Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia this year have stepped up law-enforcement efforts with the aim of recouping taxes lost to bootleg cigarette sales. Studies indicate states are losing about $5 billion annually in tax revenue because of illegal tobacco sales, said Phil Awe, who heads the tobacco-diversion division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "We do not want to have our...

"We all know that The New York Times and other papers have been thinking hard about finding ways to charge readers for the news on their web sites, and there’s evidence that the decision-making process is moving along. Bloomberg has reported that a survey of print subscribers included this sentence: The New York Times website, nytimes.com, is considering charging a monthly fee of $5.00 to access its content, including all its articles, blogs and multimedia. It also asked about a $2.50-a-month “discounted fee” for print subscribers....."