Posted on 09/08/2011 8:37:34 AM PDT by kiryandil
Edited on 09/08/2011 9:12:04 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Reporting from Sacramento— Amazon.com cut a tentative deal with legislative leaders Wednesday night that would allow it to postpone collecting sales taxes from Californians for another year.
Amazon crumbles. The need to hear from customers stating if they collect sales taxes, the customers will go elsewhere.
Yikes, what a crew of liberal ghouls at the story link.
Just curious - where is this “elsewhere”, especially for those with Kindles?
Well, if you have a kindle you have tied yourself to Amazon, but there are alternative book readers such as the Nook. For everything else, there is an endless array of outlets. The Amazon Marketplace is a convenience. We can all go directly to most sources without Amazon.
"Reporting from Sacramento— Amazon.com cut a tentative deal with legislative leaders Wednesday night that would allow it to postpone collecting sales taxes from Californians for another year. The company in turn would drop its battle to overturn the state's new law that required it and many other out-of-state online retailers to collect the taxes."
LOL - And one year from now Amazon will just go ahead and close its California operations, and/or resume its efforts to overturn the offending law. This "deal" cost Amazon nothing and gives them another year of the status quo.
“I’m concerned about anything that would reduce revenues going forward because we’re in a very uncertain economy,” the governor said last week. “We need more revenues unless we’re going to keep curbing schools, courts, corrections.”
I love a good quote.
“I’m concerned about anything that would reduce revenues going forward because we’re in a very uncertain economy,” the governor said last week. “We need more revenues unless we’re going to keep curbing schools, courts, corrections.”
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Yes by all means, Moonbeam “curb” away. Curb at full speed and curb at will.
Oh, and START with those obscenely fat, taxpayer-funded, government worker pensions. ALL of them.
This is really bad news because it shows that any state now can force a out of state company to collect state sales taxes for it, without a change in Federal law. Maryland is following CA because it just jacked up it's sales tax by 50%.
The CA law referenced:
California tells online retailers to start collecting sales taxes from customers
That's not true. All you need is the shareware eCalibre. It's an eBook manager & can also convert from epub to mobi (Kindle's format) to pdf , etc. etc.
I use it all the time. Works great.
http://calibre-ebook.com/
—Just curious - where is this “elsewhere”, especially for those with Kindles?—
Public libraries, for starters.
We have a Kindle. We’ve never paid for anything and read a LOT. If I had to throw it away I’d survive. We’ve already got our money’s worth out of it.
—LOL - And one year from now Amazon will just go ahead and close its California operations, and/or resume its efforts to overturn the offending law. This “deal” cost Amazon nothing and gives them another year of the status quo.—
That is certainly the way I read it. There may be details left out, but who knows. The politicians just may be that stupid.
A year’s delay in collecting the taxes will allow time for a referendum on the issue, I would think. Then if that fails to pass, Amazon can still pull out.
I presume they would prefer not to pull out. It would hurt California most, but it would also hurt Amazon, losing all those clients and sources.
Presumably this ties in with the failure of the emergency bill to pass, mentioned just above, which would have bypassed the referendum procedure.
So, I wouldn’t write Amazon off quite yet.
Which is just what the eCalibre will allow you to do with your Kindle. When you say If course, with a general Ereader or software, you have the freedom to go to a lot of other sources, you're still paying for the books, yes?
move out, or add the additional tax separately at 'checkout', giving full credit to the socialists, by name, that voted for it...
Thank you. I shall check it out.
Beyond direct Internet transactions, Amazon boosts its California sales by relying on a network of local website operators who earn commissions as affiliates by directing some of their traffic to the Seattle company. That network, critics claim, creates a basis to require Amazon to collect sales tax from all its California customers. Skinner's bill could put some of those small websites out of business, said Rebecca Madigan, a spokeswoman for 25,000 Amazon affiliates in California. "Out-of-state retailers will simply stop advertising on the California websites to avoid having to collect California sales tax," she said. "So, at the end of the day, California website advertising income is cut off, and the state doesn't collect sales tax revenue."
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