The Internet takes tax-free shopping to a totally different level. This is one of the main attractions for customers to shop online. However, the fact is that some Internet sales are subject to sales.

The pressure on the major internet retailers like Amazon.com is forcing them to scale down their operations in states where they are being demanded to collect taxes from buyers.

Online business is growing rapidly and is expected to reach almost $160 billion this year, according to Forrester Research.

Online Retailers With A Physical Presence In A State

But most online sales do not have to collect sales tax, unless they have a physical presence in the state. If an online retailer has some sort of a physical presence in any state, such as a business office, warehouse or a store, then it must collect sales tax from customers of that particular state.

To better understand, let’s take an example: If you have a store in California and you sell online who is also from California, you will need to collect sales tax from that person, even if the item is being shipped from a warehouse located elsewhere.

Currently, there is no need of collecting sales tax from customers who are located in a state where there is no such physical presence.

This rule comes from a decision by the Supreme Court in 1992, where it was said that mail-order merchants did not have to collect sales taxes for sales into states where they did not have any physical presence. This ruling includes all remote sellers, including online retailers.

Independent Partners Selling Through Major Online Retailers

While many online retailers may not have presence in many states, they are still responsible for collecting taxes if they have independent partners in states. For example, Amazon and Overstock permit independent companies with physical presence in different states to sell their goods through their sites and charge them a fee. These major retailers will have to collect taxes even in states where these independent companies exist, as they are selling indirectly through them.

This rule came into effect last year in New York. If you have been following the internet sales tax drama, you would remember that it was even challenged in court. Now, Hawaii, Rhode Island and North Carolina also have passed similar laws. As a response to this law, both the internet giants have cancelled all their associate programs in these states.

Amazon will not really be affected even if all their associate partners are cancelled, as it constitutes only 10% of their total sales. In fact, the margins from these indirect sales are lower than their direct sales.

Local Stores Creating Legal Subsidiaries Online

There are exceptions to this rule. Local stores sell products online tax free by establishing separate legal subsidiaries to handle the business online. Since the online business does not have a physical presence in the state, they do not have to collect sales tax on online purchases. This practice of getting around the rules to avoid sales tax is not appreciated by the “solely” brick-and-mortar retailers who still have to collect taxes from their customers.

Why Local Retailers Feel At A Disadvantage

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Small, light and inexpensive laptops that are best suited for general computing, internet applications and accessing web-based applications are now also going to do the job of navigation devices.

The Netbook, typically weighing 2-3 pounds could be your latest personal navigation device that shows you the way around.

Dell has introduced a GPS and Wi-Fi card in their netbooks, and turned them into gizmos that can offer turn-by-turn directions as perfectly and as efficiently as any other good standalone navigation device.

Alan Sicher, a senior wireless product manager at Dell said, “Smartphones already have GPS capabilities. We are now bringing it to netbooks so the devices know where you are and can help you where you want to go.”

Now that the traditional standalone GPS gadget has been around for a while and taken for granted, navigation device makers are looking to create something innovative and are looking to offer their software on other devices too. (more…)

If you went to this music show and shot a video of your favorite rock star, and wish to share it with the world, you would obviously head over to YouTube. Why are people not considering the several alternatives?

When we think of video on the internet, the first thing that comes to mind is the Mogul of video, YouTube. No doubt YouTube’s popularity is unparalleled. There is certainly nothing wrong with YouTube and they have the distinction of spearheading the video sharing revolution. However, it is not necessarily the only site that can be used for posting videos on the Web.

Even if you decide to check out different video sharing sites, where would you go? Different people have different needs; while some have memories to store, others may wish to make a quick buck.

Here is a list of some video sharing sites which allow sharing of the videos and much more.

Tubemogul.com: This is a service that is provided by an online distribution and video analytics company. It helps marketers measure the impact their online marketing campaigns have. It allows uploading of video to all the main video sharing websites at one go. Users are also provided stats of when, where and how often their videos are watched. The most beautiful feature is the ability to track viewer demographics and geographics. With 100 MB being the upload limit, the major sites that are supported by this service are YouTube, MySpace video, AOL video, Google video, Yahoo video , Revver and Metacafe. (more…)