Amazon to alter the way it does business in California

The L.A. Times reports:

Amazon.com Inc. will change the way it does business, at least in California, now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law a bill that requires the giant Internet retailer and certain out-of-state online merchants to collect sales taxes on purchases by Californians.

Starting next Sept. 15, Amazon and many other Internet retailers will lose their ability to offer essentially a savings to customers by skipping the levy of 7.25% or more, which bricks-and-mortar stores and other merchants must collect.

Brown signed the measure Friday at the San Francisco headquarters of Gap Inc., a clothing manufacturer that backed the legislation. The new law supplants a similar one that Amazon had been challenging since it took effect July 1.

Abandoning its fight to avoid collecting sales taxes, Amazon now seeks to build what Paul Misener, a company vice president, called "a lasting partnership with the state."

The Seattle company, he said, plans to spend $500 million to open large distribution centers and other facilities in California that would create 10,000 full-time jobs — ones that carry such benefits as health insurance.

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