{"id":2917,"date":"2007-11-15T03:01:51","date_gmt":"2007-11-15T11:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/11\/spitzer_the_ankle_byter.html"},"modified":"2007-11-15T03:01:51","modified_gmt":"2007-11-15T11:01:51","slug":"spitzer_the_ank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/11\/spitzer_the_ank.html","title":{"rendered":"Spitzer The Ankle Byter . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Elliot Spitzer learns the hard way that executive experience is not at all like the “rollicking discussions” he once enjoyed as a youth around his parents’ dinner table<\/a>. Less than a day — or if you believe the Sun, just hours — after details emerge about the governor’s proposed Amazon tax<\/a>, he clumsily retreats<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a second major policy reversal in less than a day, Governor Spitzer is backing down from a plan to require Amazon.com and other online retailers to charge state and local sales taxes on all purchases from New York.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, just hours after The New York Sun reported on the new revenue collection scheme, the Spitzer administration announced that it was burying it for the time being — at least until after the Christmas shopping season. The move saved New York City shoppers from having to pay an additional 8.375% on many Amazon.com goods.<\/p>\n

“Governor Spitzer believes that now is not the right time to be increasing sales taxes on New Yorkers,” Mr. Spitzer’s budget director, Paul Francis, said in a statement. “He has directed the Department of Tax and Finance to pull back its interpretation that would require some Internet retailers that do not collect sales tax to do so.”<\/p>\n

The turnabout came just hours after Mr. Spitzer said he was dropping his plan to allow illegal immigrants in New York to obtain driver’s licenses.<\/p>\n

In this latest instance, Mr. Spitzer wasted little time before pulling the plug on another controversial policy, aborting it before it threatened to snowball into a distraction for his administration.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And do you really believe this part?<\/p>\n

Mr. Francis, in an interview, said the governor was unaware of the new tax policy, which the tax department quietly issued with a memorandum on Friday. It was supposed to go into effect next month, in time for the holiday shopping rush.<\/p>\n

“The governor really wasn’t aware of this. My focus is to raise revenue, and the governor has a broader perspective,” Mr. Francis said. “It’s a big government, and in hindsight, we probably should have made sure he focused on it. It’s one of those things, so you live and learn.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a new political axiom is born: if there’s one thing the netroots hate, it’s taxing crap they buy on Amazon (and all for a lousy $100 million . . . that’s somehow using political capital wisely?).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elliot Spitzer learns the hard way that executive experience is not at all like the “rollicking discussions” he once enjoyed as a youth around his parents’ dinner table. Less than a day — or if you believe the Sun, just hours — after details emerge about the governor’s proposed Amazon tax, he clumsily retreats: In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,62,29,65,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer_issues","category-followed_by_a_perplexed_stroke_of_the_chin","category-huzzah","category-see_the_thing_is_was","category-well_what_did_you_expect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}