Amazon's offer in California sales tax fight gets tepid response

Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) and the state's two top legislative leaders are showing little enthusiasm for an offer by Amazon to hire as many as 7,000 workers if the state would delay efforts until 2014 to force all online retailers to collect California sales taxes.

Gov Brown did not dismiss the Amazon bid out of hand, but he said he was worried about losing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales taxes from Amazon and other Internet sellers based out of state under a new law requiring them to collect the money. "I'm concerned about anything that would reduce revenues going forward because we're in a very uncertain economy," Gov Brown said after attending an awards ceremony for correctional officers in Sacramento. "We need more revenues unless we're going to keep curbing schools, courts, corrections."

Most legislators and business groups, after having more time to absorb the details, viewed the offer as too good to be true, panning it as an attempt to stall for time.