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HARTFORD (AP) — Devotees of coupons and discounts are angry at Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's proposal to slap a new sales tax on the original price of a good or service rather than the discounted price. Ending the sales tax exemptions for coupons, discounts and automobile trade-ins are among tax exemptions Malloy has proposed ending to help close the state's projected $3.5 billion deficit. For example, the tax would be imposed on the $30 price of a blouse, not the $15 sales price. Gina Juliano learned firsthand after she lost her job in 2009 as a vice principal in the...

As a result of an ongoing tax dispute with Texas, Amazon.com has decided to take its ball and go home. The online retailer said Thursday that it would shutter its Irving distribution facility April 12 and cancel plans to hire as many as 1,000 additional workers rather than pay Texas what the state says is owed in uncollected sales tax. Texas wants $269 million from Seattle-based Amazon in past-due sales tax. It sent the bill to the company last October. “Despite much hard work and the support of other Texas officials, we’ve been unable to come to a resolution with...

Could a national sales tax help fix the deficit and gain enough political support to break the stalemate in the nation's capital? Yahoo! reader Brad Sylvester believes it could. Following a contentious midterm election, some 81 percent of respondents to a recent ABC News/Yahoo! News poll said they expect partisan warfare and inaction to continue over the next two years. ... There are plenty of ideas on how to return the government to fiscal responsibility. ... Many Republicans refuse to consider any tax hikes at all. And many liberal Democrats — who, ironically, may have even more power in the...

An estimated $1.145 billion in use tax owed by Californians goes unpaid each year, according to an estimate released today by the state Board of Equalization. BOE noted that much of the unpaid total is the result of consumers purchasing from out-of-state retailers not required to collect California tax. Many of those purchases are made online or via catalog orders. BOE said the use tax owed is the same as the sales tax that would be due if the purchase were made from an in-state retailer. BOE said it is reminding holiday shoppers to save receipts, calculate the use tax...

California’s business tax climate is second worst in the nation, better only than New York’s, according to a new report from the Tax Foundation. New Jersey managed to move up two spots on the list after four straight years as the nation’s worst business tax climate... The index is based on the premise that taxes matter to business and states don’t raise or lower taxes in a vacuum. “The modern market is characterized by mobile capital and labor. Therefore, companies will locate where they have the greatest competitive advantage...

According to Amazon, last month the state of Texas issued the company an assessment of $269 million for uncollected sales taxes for a four year period from Dec. 2005 to Dec. 2009. Amazon says the assessment is "without merit" and says it intends to "vigorously defend" itself in the matter.

Amazon has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina’s Department of Revenue to prevent the state from getting the names of every resident that bought anything from the retailer since 2003. The ramifications could be huge. As you may recall, Amazon has been dueling with a few states over taxation issues. States, which are struggling to balance bloated budgets, are mulling over taxing out-of-state Internet retailers. The Amazon complaint could be alarming for those of us trying to think ahead a few steps. In Amazon’s complaint, the company said: The North Carolina Department of Revenue (the “DOR”) is demanding that Amazon...

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% of voters nationwide favor a national sales tax if the money is used to pay for health care for all Americans, but 51% oppose that idea. These findings are unchanged from December. Take health care out of the equation, however, and opposition to a national sales tax on all goods and services is higher. Only 22% favor a national sales tax as a way for the government to raise more money, while 60% are opposed. Eighteen percent (18%) are undecided. Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide think tax increases hurt...

Influential conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer is predicting that to pay for the unconstitutional mess known as Obamacare, Obama will have to push for a National Sales Tax within the coming year. In analysis delivered on the O'Reilly Factor, Krauthammer explained why he's certain that the Public Option—long denied by Obama and the Democrats as something we would see—is in fact here already, too, in the very bill Obama signed into law just yesterday. A sales tax is defined as a levy on the sale of goods and services, likely imposed at different levels of business activity; so it's really a...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Gov. Joe Manchin wouldn't come right out and say it, but there appears to be a good shot that he will veto a proposed sales tax holiday on gun purchases in West Virginia. "I can't look struggling children and families in the eye and say 'I'm sorry that I can't help you, but by God you don't have to pay the sales tax on guns'," Manchin said. The so-called "Second Amendment Appreciation Act" quietly slipped through on the final day of the legislative session with heavy support in both houses. It would exempt guns from the state'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...

we need Congress to "give us permission" to collect state sales tax from out-of-state vendors. ... Everywhere you look, government collects taxes: sales tax, real estate tax, the car tax, and income tax are only the most obvious. For example, my last Verizon bill had over $18 in taxes and "fees." We don't need new taxes. But the bill being considered does not impose a new tax. Virginia has a 5 percent general sales tax. For most purchases, business collects the sales tax with the purchase. However, when a company has no state "presence," they don't have to collect the...

The recent passage of H.B 10-1193 has just prompted internet giant retailer Amazon.com to leave Colorado and all of its affiliates in the State.This Bill that only the most informed among us has even heard of before this, levied a new tax on all out-of-State retailers including through internet communications....So, without double-speak, it basically puts the responsibility onto the out-of-State retailer (Amazon.com in this case) to collect and pay the necessary sales taxes of an advertiser inside Colorado....Democrat lawmakers, including Gov. Bill Ritter, criticized Amazon for cutting off affiliates, with some calling it "corporate bullying."

The political battle over taxing online sales made through retailers such as Amazon.com intensified Tuesday, with Democrats saying the state should not back down from trying to collect money it's owed and Republicans arguing the new law should be repealed. The hardened stances came a day after Amazon said it would end its relationships with thousands of online affiliates in Colorado who send business its way through blogs and niche websites and then earn commissions on each sale. Republicans immediately blamed the Democratic-controlled legislature for passing a bill that attempts to collect the state's 2.9 percent sales tax on online...

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...

I’ve been an Amazon Associate (Amazon’s affiliate program) for many years. Today I got the following notice in my Amazon Associates account. and I woke up to the following email.

The Obama Administration loves to sing the praises of "transparency," but finding such in any aspect of our government is difficult to say the least. Recently the Internal Revenue Service started to bang the drum on the importance of reducing errors and fraud by placing pressure on tax preparation services like H & R Block. These companies are taking the blame for poorly filling out forms that really need to be simplified. Steve Malanga, editor for Real Clear Markets and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute believes that the end of errors could be found in the act of...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- A study shows Tennessee's average 9.4 cent tax on every $1 spent is the highest sales tax rate in America. Opponents of the sales tax say it's most unfair to those least able to pay but others favor the sales tax over a state income tax. The author of the tax comparison study, Tax Foundation staff economist Kail Padgitt, said an increasing number of states are raising so-called "millionaire taxes" on income of the wealthiest taxpayers and so-called "sin taxes" on cigarettes or beer. Padgitt told the Chattanooga Times Free Press the foundation is "definitely seeing more...

Have you been tracking Congress's frantic search for the hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax revenues it needs to fund its spending orgy? The latest Willie-Sutton trial balloon is a tax on Wall Street transactions. This is being met by howls of protest, as is customary whenever Congress fingers a new source of wealth it would like to spread around. As tax proposals fly, enticing targeted groups to hike their campaign giving in hopes of shifting the burden elsewhere, might it make sense to examine the moral basis of these proposals? Oddly enough, there is a form of...

Fiscal Fact No. 196 Introduction Sales taxes are paradoxically transparent and non-transparent. A taxpayer can easily see how high the tax is by looking at the receipt for any purchase. It's hard to imagine a more transparent tax.