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Opinion: March 22, 2011 buzz: Libya intervention; sales tax for online shoppers

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Most viewed and shared: More bombs bursting in Libya. What for?

‘Wait a minute. How did this happen?’ asks Michael Kinsley in Tuesday’s Op-Ed pages. ‘A month or so ago, massive bombing of Libya was on no one’s agenda.’ In fact, he says, ‘Libya was considered one of the least urgent cases of awfulocracy.’

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Most commented: Are you an online tax cheat?

Just because you shop online doesn’t mean that you don’t owe California taxes, explains the editorial board in Tuesday’s pages. Here’s a snippet from the editorial:

The misunderstanding comes into play because of differences in the way the taxes are collected. At the boulevard shoe store, the retailer adds on the tax, collects it and remits it to the state. At the online store, the retailer winks, looks the other way and leaves it to the buyer to add up the tax owed and send it in to the state Board of Equalization. And how many Californians do that? How many Californians even know they are supposed to? How many have even heard of the Board of Equalization? Our guess is not many. Even among those who know, it’s a good bet that most don’t bother with the taxes because they can get away with not paying them or because figuring out what is owed and how to pay it is too difficult. Contrary to popular lore, retail sales of books, shoes, clothing or anything else do not magically become tax-free just because the transaction takes place on a laptop or a smart phone. If you have to pay 9.75% in sales tax when you buy a pair of designer shoes at Discount Shoe Warehouse on Ventura Boulevard, you have to pay the same 9.75% when you buy the same shoes online from Nevada-based (and Amazon-owned) Zappos. It’s only fair, and more to the point, it’s the law.

This isn’t exactly what an online shopper wants to hear, especially one who didn’t realize they were in the wrong. Judging from the comments on our discussion board, though, readers are resistant to paying an online sales tax. Here’s a sampling:

GregMaragos: Wouldn’t it be grand if the retailer didn’t collect the tax, and, instead, the state had to do it themselves? Imagine them sending you a bill at the end of the year, telling you that you owed them thousands, possibly tens of thousands of dollars for all the things you bought the previous year. Essentially, that is what they do with the 9.75% sales tax, only they collect it at the time of sale. They can’t take the chance you’ll skip town or run out of money, so the tax-hungry state, darling little creature that it is, demands that you pay as you go. Ain’t it just LOVELY? Clearly, they care. Yes, they’re just that good. areeda: When I first started to pay real taxes in the 1960’s I asked my father why didn’t the State just send us a bill for all the taxes they wanted instead of Income tax, sales tax, property tax, vehicle tax, one tax on the phone bill, another on the water bill, another on the gas bill another on the cable tv bill (no catv then), gasoline tax, and the myriad of others. It certainly would be cheaper to collect it once a year from one place. His response was, ‘if people knew what they were really paying they’d never put up with it. This is the only way the government can take that much from us’. If they sent us a bill once a year even the most left leaning tax loving among us couldn’t stomach it. This is the only technique that works to boil this frog. Huntington: California is in the midst of an overdue debate over spending and just how the tax dollars currently generated are being spent, and in the mind of some how tax dollars are being squandered. Am sympathetic to the businesses in California on this issue but I’m loath to support new taxes of any type until we further address spending, pensions, public agencies such as redevelopment agencies with sketchy accounting practices and deplorable track records. No new taxes ... at least not yet.

--Alexandra Le Tellier

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March 21, 2011 buzz: ‘Outsourced,’ Libya intervention, same-sex marriage

March 18, 2011 buzz: In L.A., paying for carpool lanes; saving puppies

March 17, 2011 buzz: Tsunami threat; Left-seeming NPR

March 16, 2011 buzz: Sex, lies and faith

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