Tag: sales tax

A measure that could raise up to $3.5 billion for Colorado’s long list of road and bridge repairs squeaked through a Republican-controlled Senate committee...

Reaction from conservative lawmakers and their allies to a transportation bill introduced Wednesday afternoon has been swift and from some, brutal. The plan would seek voter approval to...

Notes from the 93rd day of the 2014 legislative session.

The debate between supporters and opponents of Colorado pot tax Proposition AA is an ideological debate on how taxes will affect pot as a product in an emerging market. Voters will decide where they stand tomorrow.

Struggling with an ongoing recession-era budget crisis that has seen hundreds of millions of dollars slashed from public education alone, Colorado lawmakers tried and failed to get mega-online retailer Amazon to pay state sales taxes last year. Amazon successfully dodged similar efforts in other states, but the tax man came calling in cash-strapped California last spring and, after dumping $5 million on a ballot initiative to oppose the new online tax law, Amazon announced on Wednesday it had made a deal with state lawmakers. It will charge sales tax in the Golden State next year. That gives Amazon and other online retailers just months to press federal lawmakers to pass a national law that thins their obligations in the states.

Colorado lawmakers staring down an historic recession budget deficit last year passed legislation requiring Amazon.com to finally begin collecting sales taxes in the state. It didn't go so well. Amazon is still doing business here tax free. A similar battle is waging now in California, only on a greater scale, drawing the eyes of politics and business watchers in Colorado and around the nation. The California case likely won't go as well for Amazon as the Colorado case did. Amazon does huge online business in California and it also has a physical presence in the state, for example in the Silicon Valley warehouse where it develops its Kindle readers. Indeed, the tide seems generally to be turning against the online retailer, which has grown massive over the past two decades, spreading its roots in the fertile ground of a tax-free internet fairyland.

Borders Group will close six book stores and layoff 158 employees in Colorado this month. The news comes in the wake of a court order preventing online bookselling juggernaut Amazon.com from paying any sales tax in the state and a month after Amazon reported raking in eye-popping record profits.