Sales Tax

TRENTON - A sales-tax exemption measure designed to encourage major online retailers to locate in New Jersey has been introduced in the Legislature. The bill would help alleviate disparities between online retailers, who are not required to collect New Jersey's 7 percent sales tax unless they have a physical presence in the state, and bricks-and-mortar stores, according to Democrats. "My goal and the goal of legislative leadership has always been to find a way to balance the interests of the retail merchants and the Internet merchants in a way that will ensure equity and a level playing field going forward," said Assembly Majority Leader Louis D. Greenwald (D., Camden)

Gov. Casey declared his adamant opposition yesterday to a Republican proposal that would raise the state sales tax to achieve local tax revision - even though the plan has yet to be completed or formally unveiled. Casey, at a hastily called news conference, also pledged to veto a second plan by Senate Republicans to make tax cuts of $98 million, mostly in business taxes. "This year I do not think it's appropriate for Pennsylvania to be reducing taxes or to be increasing taxes because of the fiscal situation we find ourselves in," Casey said.

Officials from Pennsylvania and New York signed a cooperative agreement yesterday to combat sales-tax evasion. Under the agreement, the two states will share merchants' sales-tax information as well as lists of customers who have purchased items in either state but have not paid sales tax. Pennsylvania charges a 6 percent sales tax while New York charges a 4 percent sales tax with a local option of up to 4.25 percent. Pennsylvania law requires state residents who buy merchandise out of state to pay a 6 percent use tax, applicable in mail and telephone orders and in cases when items bought in person are shipped to the buyer's home state.

Assembly Democrats who have balked at Gov. Corzine's budget proposals will hold a hearing today on a spending plan of their own that avoids a one-point increase in the state's 6 percent sales tax. The $30.4 billion alternative budget has no across-the-board tax increase but institutes a new fee on New Jersey wage-earners, adds taxes on fur coats and car rentals, and makes deeper cuts to child welfare, parks and property-tax programs than the...

Put a little extra Gleem on the old toothbrush this morning. Heck, floss if you've got the urge. Go out to the bagel shop and buy a dozen. Buy two dozen. Starting immediately, those and other items will be free from the state sales tax after coming under the 6 percent levy - by mistake - for the last 2 1/2 months. Gov. Casey yesterday signed legislation that cleaned up errors in the $3 billion-plus tax-increase package passed in August. The changes, unanimously approved this week by the House and Senate, will cost an estimated $30 million in revenue.

You drive across the border into Delaware daily, in sport-utility vehicles, minivans, or at least cars with roomy trunks. All you Pennsylvanians and New Jerseyans are on a mission to buy on the cheap, bypassing malls, big-box retailers and mom-and-pop stores at home to pocket savings. Computers, refrigerators, furniture and stereo systems. All of it is available in Delaware without sales tax. It's one of five states with that shopper-heaven distinction. Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon are the others.

State and township officials are pushing to lower the 6 percent state sales tax to 3 percent in a section of the township, saying business owners cannot compete with adjacent communities that already have a reduced sales tax. "If people come here, they have to pay 6 percent," said Township Administrator Ed Sasdelli. "Why would they come here if it is cheaper to go there?" Earlier this year, township officials formed a task force to find ways to level the economic playing field in Franklin, a 55-square-mile municipality that bellies up to Salem County and Vineland, which boast a 3 percent sales tax. The task force caught the attention of Sen. John J. Matheussen (R., Gloucester)

With less than a week before the state's budget deadline, Gov. Corzine and his fellow Democrats are locked in a sales-tax showdown. The former Wall Street executive has tied the future of his first budget to a one-penny increase in the state's 6 percent sales tax, arguing that it would solve a years-long fiscal crisis. But majority-party lawmakers - and South Jersey Democrats in particular - are standing squarely in his way. Negotiations on the freshman governor's proposed $30.9 billion spending plan have gone so poorly that Corzine has told his staff to prepare for a government shutdown if he rejects the budget the Legislature is required to send him before July 1. Faced with that kind of deadline pressure, some North and Central Jersey lawmakers are willing to discuss a last-minute change of heart on the sales tax. Sen. Paul Sarlo (D., Bergen)

Defiant Assembly Democrats still say New Jersey didn't need a sales-tax increase. But what the state did need six days into an increasingly embarrassing government shutdown, they said, was a deal. Democrats arrived at the Statehouse yesterday morning resigned to putting an end to their weeks-long showdown with Gov. Corzine over his proposed one-point increase in the state's 6 percent sales tax. And so when he offered a compromise - albeit one a shade different than a plan he had embraced 10 days ago - they jumped at it. Like the 10-day-old compromise brokered by Senate President Richard J. Codey (D., Essex)

In Cherry Hill, the Pet Shoppe alerted customers with a sign: "Sales Tax Increase Effective Saturday 15th. Buy Now and Save. " Other businesses, including Eckenhoff Buick in Cherry Hill, placed newspaper ads encouraging people to buy before Saturday. And some merchants phoned customers, warning them about Saturday's sales-tax increase to 7 percent. Across New Jersey, merchants and their customers were trying to take advantage of the last days of the 6 percent rate. Starting Saturday, the price of almost everything goes up. Bill DeSimone 3d, an owner of William DeSimone & Son Fine Jewelers in Moorestown, called about 25 customers who had items waiting for pickup this week.

IN THE REGION Delco OKs contract for refinery study The Delaware County Industrial Development Authority on Wednesday announced it had contracted with IHS Global Inc. to study potential uses for the 781-acre Sunoco Inc. Marcus Hook complex. The $100,000 study, which the Delaware County Council has agreed to finance, is expected to be completed in a month. Sunoco shut down its refinery in December, but says it has received no credible offers to operate the site as a refinery.

I RECENTLY HAD to rent a car in Philadelphia for the first time. I am a lifelong resident. When I looked at the bill, what blew me away was there were five separate taxes for renting a car. There is a 6-percent sales tax; the additional 2 percent for Philly; a 2-percent stadium tax; a 2-percent passenger-car rental tax; and a $2/day transportation-assistance tax. I actually asked about the last one, and the rental manager told me that Philly imposed...

When it comes to the real estate tax, opinion is deeply divided: Half of property owners hate it, and the other half really, really hate it. Dissatisfaction appears to be off the charts in North Dakota. In June, in what is believed to be a first, voters will decide whether to scrap the unpopular levy. "We consider North Dakota to be Lexington and Concord," said Charlene Nelson, a home-schooling mother who is a referendum organizer. Although nothing of that magnitude is unfolding in Pennsylvania, the legislature once again is considering bills to eliminate the property tax, oft-criticized for being unfair, antiquated, and baffling.

LONDON - The British government's intention to tax the humble Cornish pasty, a cheap pastry savory snack much beloved by workers and students, has opened a new front in the country's never-ending class war. In his United Kingdom budget last week, Finance Minister George Osborne announced he would close a loophole that allowed some fresh-baked takeaway items - including pies, sausage rolls, and pasties ( PASS-tees ) - to escape a 20 percent sales tax. The move has caused a media storm, with tabloid headlines portraying the new tax as an attack by the Conservative-led government on working-class life.

Tired of being outsold by online retailers, earthbound merchants have convinced legislatures in five states to force Web-based sellers to collect and remit sales taxes. Twenty others are working on similar laws. Now, it's time for New Jersey to join the trend and stop forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars in Web-derived tax revenue that it can use to meet its budget while protecting local businesses. Online retailers have an unfair advantage over florists, appliance stores, clothiers, music and gift shops, and other local businesses.

TRENTON - A sales-tax exemption measure designed to encourage major online retailers to locate in New Jersey has been introduced in the Legislature. The bill would help alleviate disparities between online retailers, who are not required to collect New Jersey's 7 percent sales tax unless they have a physical presence in the state, and bricks-and-mortar stores, according to Democrats. "My goal and the goal of legislative leadership has always been to find a way to balance the interests of the retail merchants and the Internet merchants in a way that will ensure equity and a level playing field going forward," said Assembly Majority Leader Louis D. Greenwald (D., Camden)

Is it time for Internet retailers - companies like Amazon, Overstock, and eBay - to finally abandon the idea that Web sales should take place free from the burden of collecting state sales taxes? That's a question that arises today thanks to two decades of policy-by-inaction - a strange soup of federal court decisions, conflicting state policies, and Internet boosterism. For all those years, policymakers have been so eager to nurture Web commerce as an engine of economic growth that they've dodged dealing with a basic inequity.

The Corbett administration is expecting about $50 million from its new efforts to collect taxes on items sold over the Internet. The state Department of Revenue provided that estimate yesterday. Gov. Corbett is pressuring Internet-based sellers to collect the sales tax at the time of purchase, as Pennsylvania-based companies have to do. Also, the state's 2011 personal-income-tax return for the first time provides a line asking taxpayers to declare how much they owe in "use tax" on purchases they've made online without paying the state sales tax. Both are 6 percent.

TRENTON - Amazon.com, the world's biggest online retailer, is in talks to open two warehouses in New Jersey in a deal that could bring 1,500 full-time jobs to a state where unemployment has hovered around 9 percent. State Assembly Democratic Leader Louis D. Greenwald, who has been involved in the talks, said Amazon was seeking a 22-month sales-tax holiday - opposed by some retailers and at least one lawmaker. The Seattle-based online retailer is not required, as brick-and-mortar retailers are, to collect the 7 percent state sales tax for purchases.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Maryland health advocates say they are happy about how Gov. Martin O'Malley has allocated proceeds from an increase in the alcohol tax for the next fiscal year. Vincent DeMarco, president of Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, said Tuesday the majority of about $64 million expected to be raised by the sales tax increase approved last year will be directed to health care purposes and the developmentally disabled. Now DeMarco says his organization will work to make sure the General Assembly approves the governor's proposal.