OLYMPIA — Starting in July, retailers must start charging sales taxes on Internet customers in Washington.
About 1,100 online retailers have agreed to charge the tax to avoid being sued by the state.
The tax rate is based on where the customer lives. Retailers have to identify 350 tax districts.
The Department of Revenue hopes to collect nearly $38 million in the online taxes in 2009. Local districts can expect nearly $12 million.
Washington is joining 18 other states that require online businesses to collect sales taxes. The group is pushing Congress to make e-commerce taxable nationally.
Seattle: UW plans college of environment
The University of Washington plans to merge six forestry, oceans and atmosphere disciplines into a new college of the environment.
It would start with 97 faculty members, more than 1,100 students and a $60 million budget.
The UW Board of Regents could vote on the matter next month. If approved the college could open in the fall of 2009.
UW Provost Phyllis Wise said the university is strong in environmental studies and has a firm foundation to build on.
Renton: Human bones found at work site
Human bones and what may be the remnants of a coffin have been found at a construction site in Renton.
Police spokeswoman Penny Bartley says the discovery is being investigated as a possible crime, but it’s also possible a body was buried decades ago. A developer purchased the land a year ago and the original house was demolished for new home construction.
Workers first uncovered a jaw bone on Tuesday and investigators with the King County medical examiner’s office turned up more bones Thursday.
Bartley says police would like to talk with anyone with information about the property at 2211 Edmonds Ave. NE.
Neah Bay: Makah court defers prosecution
A Makah judge deferred prosecution for five tribal members who killed a gray whale.
The court was unable to seat a jury for trial in Neah Bay on tribal charges of animal cruelty and discharging a firearm. Most of the 200 potential jurors were related to the defendants or had strong feelings about the case.
Chief Tribal Judge Stanley Myers said Wednesday the charges will be dropped after a year if the five abide by conditions to be set June 30 by a federal court in Tacoma. The men have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The tribe claims a treaty right to kill gray whales as it did in 1999.
Idaho: Duncan pleas unlikely to be undone
Even if confessed child killer Joseph Duncan is found mentally incompetent to represent himself at his federal sentencing hearing, his previous guilty pleas will likely stand, legal experts say.
“The law is that if you are incompetent, the proceedings are suspended,” Rodney Uphoff, a law professor at the University of Missouri and an expert on death penalty cases, told The Spokesman-Review newspaper. “I would say that it’s highly, highly unlikely that the guilty plea would be undone.”
Duncan, a convicted pedophile originally from Tacoma, pleaded guilty in December to 10 federal charges in the May 2005 kidnapping of then 8-year-old Shasta and 9-year-old Dylan Groene from their Coeur d’Alene home and Dylan’s death. Three of those crimes can carry the death penalty.
He earlier pleaded guilty in state court to murdering 13-year-old Slade Groene, his mother Brenda Groene and her fiance Mark McKenzie at the Groene home before driving away with the two children.
Associated Press
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