Bye! Bye! Californica

You must love California so much that you are keeping track of every thing happening here. Aren't there sale taxes in AZ as well?

Apple is building a new spaceship down the peninsula.

Twitter is moving in, just three blocks up Market Street from us. Commute traffic on 101 and 280, between SF and the San Jose area, is once again insane.

I imagine that there's not a lot of traffic out where Jim lives, just the 6PM rush from the burbs to Applebees.

John

haha ... i always wondered who the hell would want to live in lizard country.

I follow HotAir pretty closely. There _are_ sales taxes in AZ, but not on Amazon affiliates, thus the warehousing and shipping business in Arizona is BOOMING!

Greedy states are getting their just desserts. I note, here in NY, just about everything is 50% more than in AZ. In hard times, like right now, these greedy states are going to take the hit in unemployment.

BTW, I DO think Californica is one of the worst run states in the union. ...Jim Thompson

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One can argue that there should not be any sales taxes at all. But if there are any, everybody should pay the same, whether they are buying from internet or local stores. On the other hand, i would support sales taxes more than income taxes.

t about

But they are making more than 50% than in AZ.

That's the good part... they get to pay Federal income taxes in a higher bracket ;-)

I could easily go for a uniform flat tax and/or a consumption tax. ...Jim Thompson

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yeh, othervise it should just fine for local stores to put a computer in corner of the shop, tell people to log on to their website in some other state and buy what they have been looking at in the shop and it will be "shipped" to them on the sidewalk outside from the "warehouse" next door

-Lasse

yeh, othervise it should just fine for local stores to put a computer in corner of the shop, tell people to log on to their website in some other state and buy what they have been looking at in the shop and it will be "shipped" to them on the sidewalk outside from the "warehouse" next door

-Lasse

Well, weird things like that happen. One of my nephews once walked into a hotel and asked for a room but he found the price tag considerable higher than the price he read on the internet. So he asked for that lower price but that was only for bookings via the internet. Then he asked if there was internet available and as it was he booked via the internet for the lower price. Still don't know whether or not it had to do with taxes or some other bureaucratic rule.

petrus bitbyter

I know an engineer who has that down to a science. He literally stands in front of the row of car rental desks at an airport, logs on via his iPhone, books a deal, then walks the last 20 steps up to the matching counter with the confirmation number to get the keys. He also books the hotels that way.

Last time I did it I got a hotel in expensive Laguna Hills (So-Cal) for $90 plus taxes. That was impossible without Internet.

I had a rather odd thing happen when we were back in VT in June. When I looked at the hotel's site, the rooms were about the same price as the Internet sites, but the hotel's site had about a 40% local tax added (and not obvious). The Internet site (Orbitz, IIRC) had the tax listed as 10%. I didn't use the hotel's site. ;-)

The funny thing is I hate those Amazon "representatives". Slow shipping, flaky, actually worse than dealing with ebay. I rarely use them, so they are free to go to hell. Amazon tried to cut a deal with Ca. to put more jobs in the state if they could stay tax free, but Brown didn't take the deal.

It is ironic that if a need a bit of computer gear, Newegg has the best deal even if I have to pay tax. Sometimes Fry's beats them all, even with the tax.

rule.

Be careful with that strategy.. often the prices go up for bookings that are close to the time you need the service, and car rental bookings will tend to reflect what cars they actually have (usually they run out of the cheaper ones). For some reason A*vis has it set up so that you can't alter insurance configuration on bookings online with the main discount code (Wizard number) without a 3 business day delay. You can make changes at the counter, but it wastes time (I use a different set of defaults depending on the purpose of the trip and client). I suppose I should get more Wizard codes, but complexity of having zillions of 'accounts' mounts. Some web sites are set up to give umm.. optimistic prices to casual observers, then when you don't identify yourself as worthy and try to order the price goes up (or maybe you are worthy but already have another booking, which the website finds).

Some people will make a booking weeks in advance, try to book again at the last minute and ask a third time at the counter before revealing that they _have_ a booking (probably why they give an additional substantial discount for payment at booking in many cases). In some countries it's fairly common to try to haggle the rack rate down on hotels while standing at the check in. Personally I feel my bargaining position is somewhat weak when I'm standing there exhausted at 11pm with 25kg of luggage and rain pouring down ouside. 8-(

With a nice view of I-5 out the window? ;-)

Before the internet there were those coupon books at the rest stops. Often the discounts were a bit bogus (older unrenovated hotels, and seldom right where you needed it for business) but the prices were low. I did find a nice one at Cardiff-by-the-Sea that I stay at most every time I'm going to the north part of San Diego.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Orbitz' handling of taxes on invoices is a bit.. odd. I don't care for personal travel, but I'm not sure it would stand up to an audit.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Newegg (unlike Amazon) is fighting NY state and not collecting the NY sales tax, so I tend to go to Newegg first.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Well, it was Vermont and, yes, they are crazy.

Explain? (it was personal, so didn't even look twice)

berichtnews: snipped-for-privacy@d14g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...

probably nothing to do with taxes, it is just like the usual random discounts, coupons etc. or maybe it that the price on the internet has to compete with other hotels, or it is less work when you do the booking for them

as for taxes I think EU has found a reasonable compromise for internet sales as long a company stay under a annual limit to a country in EU, they can charge the local VAT so for a few sales to a country they don't have to figure out how to do the paperwork for that country. Once a company gets over that limit they have to charge and handle VAT in the buyers country, so they cannot avoid the tax just by setting up a website in a low VAT country

-Lasse

Probably wouldn't affect you. It was a domestic Canadian flight and they didn't itemize the HST and provide their registration number on the invoice.

No, it wouldn't have affected me but that certainly is odd. Perhaps they don't think they do business travel? Very odd.

Well, here's the topper: The car we got was a Ford Mustang. Woohoo :-)

You could literally see all the others in the big parking garage drool when we cruised out of there, windows rolled down, sunglasses on.

I don't bother with all this wizard and card and whatever stuff. I just find the most decent rate on the web and book it. Blew one client away. One the way back from the meeting their car was kinda full so I said "Hey, why don't two of you ride with me, since I'll go to the same airport". So the guy who later would end up paying my bill inquired what the rental rate was. "Slightly under $30" ... "WHAT?!" ... Turns out they had booked through their (big) company travel agency and paid well north of $50. It was the very same model Toyota and even the same color.

Nope. With a BJ's across the street, with the brewery right in there. Yay!

The hotel actually has a pretty flower garden that it's known for. Nice place:

Once I turned an invoice with travel costs into a client. "Now gow did you get a room rate under $50 in Berlin?" (that's the big Berlin, in Germany). I had stayed at a convent, a Catholic one despite me being a Lutheran. Bed, table, chair, lamp, bible. No TV, no phone. Church bells in the morning.