Internet Taxes.. New York ready to take the plunge.

Spend some time online shopping and you will notice the ease of researching different businesses for the same item. Benefits of shopping online also include: comparing shipping costs, saving money on gas by not driving from store to store and at times saving money on taxes. Well maybe not much longer for some shoppers that live in New York. New York is working on passing a law to collect taxes from web retailers that sell product to New York consumers. Once New York gets to take the big plunge, one would assume that other states would jump in as well. Amazon.com took a stance recently by suing New York State regarding the law. It is reported that New York may pull in an extra $50 million by passing the law for a small amount of work. It should be interesting to see if major & small online businesses can slow down the trend and put the brakes on it before it spills to other states.

For more info:
New York Times

Where and who is your schedule coming from?

If you use Microsoft Outlook or Google's Online calendar, be wary of who is scheduling you. A new form of annoying spammers can circumvent normal spam filters by sending you an item to add to your calendar. If canceled the appointment or event can still show up in your calendar, and most frustrating of all hitting decline means the spammer knows they have hit a valid email account and can hit you with more. What can you do if you are "scheduled" by an outsider? Turn off your "automatically accept meetings requests", be aware of who the email came from before accepting, and when declining a meeting from the unknown "Vader Spammer" make sure to choose the "don't send a response" button. And of course one of your options is just to delete.

-Chris Durnan
Vice President, Acacia I.T.
Serving Arizona Business's Computer needs since 1992.