International News

Online shoppers may have to pay sales tax

WASHINGTON (AP) States will be able to force more shoppers to pay sales tax when they make online purchases under a Supreme Court decision Thursday.

The decision will leave shoppers with lighter wallets but is a big financial win for states.

Consumers can expect to see sales tax being charged on more online purchases likely over the next year and potentially before the Christmas shopping season as states and retailers react to the court's decision, said one attorney involved in the case.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision Thursday overruled two, decades-old Supreme Court decisions that states said cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue annually.

The decisions made it more difficult for states to collect sales tax on certain online purchases, and more than 40 states had asked the high court to overrule them.

The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a customer's purchase to a state where the business didn't have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn't have to collect the state's sales tax.

Customers were generally responsible for paying the sales tax to the state themselves if they weren't charged it, but most didn't realise they owed it and few paid.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the previous decisions were flawed.

Canada to legalise marijuana

TORONTO (AP) Marijuana will be legal nationwide in Canada starting October 17 in a move that should take market share away from organised crime and protect the country's youth, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday.

The Senate gave final passage to the bill to legalise cannabis on Tuesday, legislation that will make Canada only the second country in the world to make pot legal across the country.

Trudeau said provincial and territorial governments need the time to prepare for retail sales.

"It is our hope as of October 17 there will be a smooth operation of retail cannabis outlets operated by the provinces with an online mail delivery system operated by the provinces that will ensure that this happens in an orderly fashion," Trudeau said.

The prime minister said at a news conference that the goal is to take a significant part of the market share away from organised crime.

"Over the following months and indeed years we will completely replace or almost completely replace the organised crime market on that," he said.