California Senate Approves Net Tax Bill

Grant Erickson points to this internet.com story, which says "On Thursday, the California state Senate approved a bill that requires businesses with stores in the state to charge their customers sales tax for purchases made over the Internet." The state's huge ($35 billion) budget deficit is named as a driving force for the measure.

Comments

That is the sound of inevitability....

[dtolton]

Unfortunately this is something we've all known has been a long
time in coming. When it comes to the government and collecting
"their" money, they won't let any opportunity pass them by.

It will be interesting to see how this will impact online
retailing though. Not having to pay sales tax has been helpful
to sites like Amazon for keeping their costs lower than brick
and mortar stores. Although I think many people don't figure
the cost of sales tax into the purchase of an item as frequently
as they should (I know I don't), so it may not have that large
of an effect.

One interesting sales tax law in my home state (Utah) is that if
you buy something from a state that doesn't have sales tax
(Oregon) then you have to pay sales tax to Utah. Just one of
the lovely little "bend over and grab your ankles" type of laws
on the books. I'm hopeful they won't enact the same type of law
for internet commerce, but I don't have much hope.