I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Colorado lawmakers recently decided to impose an online sales tax, a move that is generating a battle in Denver and highlighting the pressure states face to find new revenues.
The New Mexico Legislature considered a bill to tax online sales during the 30-day regular session, but the bill never got out of the first committee assigned to study it.
Rep. Eleanor Chavez, D-Albuquerque, who sponsored that legislation, said she’s planning on introducing a similar bill in 2011 if she’s re-elected.
“We have to look at every possible scenario,” Chavez told The Independent. As an example of states’ growing interest in taxing online sales, Chavez said Nevada officials contacted her during the 30-day regular session to ask her why the bill had died so quickly.
“I think people had a hard time because it died rapidly” in House Business and Industry Committee, Chavez said of her fellow state lawmakers. “They wanted to know how we were going to enforce it. They really couldn’t understand it and they thought maybe it wouldn’t be worth our while if we couldn’t enforce it.”
The prognosis for Colorado’s new law, signed by Gov. Bill Ritter on Feb. 24, is unclear, the Denver Post reports.
Amazon.com announced this week that it would no longer do business with thousands of blogs and niche websites in that state that send business its way. The Colorado measure requires online retailers to send notices to Colorado buyers that they owe state tax on their purchases, and it would fine the retailers $5 per unsent invoice if they don’t do it.
Amazon’s announcement has split Colorado lawmakers and others, 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the state should not back down from trying to collect money it’s owed and Republicans arguing the new law should be repealed, according to the Denver Post.
Whatever happens, both sides agree the fight with Amazon could have national implications, the Post notes.
Colorado’s approach in attempting to collect sales tax from online retailers who don’t have a physical presence in the state is unique from any other state that has tried to collect the same tax.
That’s because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that firms without a physical presence in a state, such a mail-order businesses, weren’t required to collect sales tax on purchases. That has meant that states can tax online purchases from businesses with a physical presence, say like Wal-Mart. But online retailers that do not have a so-called “nexus” have used that ruling in the past to fight off the imposition of sales tax on their business.
The battle over online sales, however, has heated up after New York State imposed collection of sales tax on online sales from companies like Amazon.com in 2008, using a different collection mechanism than Colorado. Now more and more states have begun looking at taxing online purchases as potential new revenue as their budgetary problems have grown.
