Retail

But brick and mortar retailers insist the idea won't go down without a fight

Republican leaders in Congress are renewing their vows to fight a proposal expanding the sales taxes applied to online purchases, dealing a blow to brick and mortar retailers who hoped to get a bill passed during the post-midterm lame duck session.

Currently, states can only apply sales tax to online purchases made by their residents from retailers with a physical presence in the same state. The Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) would reverse that, allowing states to tax online purchases made by their residents regardless of the merchant’s whereabouts. While the idea has sometimes been called the “Amazon Tax,” it’s become less applicable to the giant online retailer because the company is increasingly setting up warehouses in new states to reduce shipping times.

The MFA passed the then-Democrat-controlled Senate last year, but it was never picked up in the Republican-controlled House. With Republicans now firmly in control of both chambers of Congress, the bill looks like it’s headed nowhere fast. House Speaker John Boehner, who’s long been opposed to the MFA, said this week it will be tabled for the remainder of this year’s lame duck congressional session and would face heightened scrutiny in the year ahead, the Hill reports.

“The Speaker has made clear in the past he has significant concerns about the bill,” a Boehner spokesperson said. “And it won’t move forward this year. The Judiciary Committee continues to examine the measure and the broader issue.”

Still, backers of the bill vowed to continue the fight. “Most Americans won’t be taking the next two months off, and neither should Congress,” said Jason Brewer of the Retail Industry Leaders Association in a statement to CNBC News.

Supporters of the Marketplace Fairness Act have attempted to tie it to a similar-sounding but separate bill that extends a longstanding ban on taxing Internet access, a deeply popular moratorium on both sides of the aisle.

[The Hill]

Fighting to win a holiday neither can afford to lose

The largest U.S. retailers have thrown down the gauntlet this year and announced deeper Black Friday weekend discounts than ever over a longer period, as they are desperate not to lose a single penny to the competition during the holiday shopping wars.

Wal-Mart Stores, which recently lowered its sales forecast for the year, stirring fears about its holiday prospects, has announced an aggressive program of deals for what is now a full-on Black Friday week. The plan includes bigger deals than last year on items such as TVs on Thanksgiving itself, week-long price cuts on 3,700 more items than in 2013, and a 24-hour pre-Black Friday sale today on its website.

Wal-Mart’s go-for-the-throat strategy comes as the retailer tries to return to U.S. comparable sales growth after six quarters. Black Friday, which now is the anchor to what has become a week-long kick-off to the holiday shopping season, isn’t always a firm indicator of how the holiday season will shape up for retailers. But no store can afford to do poorly that weekend, which sets the tone for a season that generates 30% of annual sales on average.

Target—also in need of a successful holiday season after a Grinch called “Databreach” stole Christmas last year—has similarly been aggressive, holding a pre-Black Friday online sale this week and has removed all shipping costs since Oct. 22 through Dec. 20.

“You’ve seen a number of retailers pull forward their events throughout the weekend, and you’re seeing a lot of activity, which tells me it’s going to be very competitive,” Duncan MacNaughton, Walmart U.S.’s chief merchandising officer, told reporters during a media briefing.

Wal-Mart will kick off its Black Friday festivities with an online sale at midnight on Thanksgiving, continue with its first full-on in-store Black Friday (note to the retail industry—we need a new name for this—since the sales now start on Thursday) event at 6 p.m. that day, including nine items which Walmart guarantees that customers can buy between 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. get regardless of whether the store runs out of inventory. A second sale focused on electronics will start at 8 p.m., and a third sale will start at 6 a.m. on Friday the 28th. (Walmart stores have been open on Thanksgiving since 1988.)

And gross margins be damned, Wal-Mart’s prices appear to be lower than last year’s when Walmart sold a Vizio 60” Smart TV sold for $688 on Black Friday—this year a 65” Vizio Smart TV goes for $648. Wal-Mart is leaving nothing to chance—for the first time it is offering maps for each of its 4,000 or so stores so shoppers don’t get lost looking for that flatscreen being stocked in the frozen food section on this one occasion.

Target is also going all-in with more deals this year. The discount chain, which already held a pre-sale this week, will offer Black Friday deals starting on the preceding Sunday that will last for a week. And it will offer a few items on sale early on the Wednesday before the holiday. Meanwhile, Best Buy, to get a leg up on its rivals on a shopping day that is heavy on electronics, will open its stores at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving with Black Friday deals. Its stores will remain open until 1 a.m., then re-open at 8 a.m. It will also hold an online-only “doorbuster” sale on Thanksgiving.

The onslaught of promotion is a tacit acknowledgement by retailers of how tough the season is going to be.

“Overall, just because you’ve moved the sales up, or extended them, or expanded Thanksgiving, that doesn’t increase the amount of money people will spend for the season,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, which has forecast a “sluggish” holiday season.

Wal-Mart appears to be dialing it up a notch this year—despite its big efforts in 2013, and Target’s abysmal holiday, Walmart was unable to pull off a holiday quarter with positive comparable sales growth in the holiday quarter last year.

It’s become a truism that Black Friday has been diluted by earlier and earlier sales in November, and the likes of mainstream stores like Macy’s and J.C. Penney opening on Thanksgiving. But the fact remains, Black Friday is still a big deal: ShopperTrak, a data firm, expects Black Friday to remain the second biggest sales day of the season, after the final Saturday before Christmas.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Read next: Two Dozen Retailers Won’t Open on Thanksgiving–And They’re Shaming the Ones That Will

China's anti-Valentine's Day is the world's biggest day for online shopping

There are too many men in China.

That’s not the complaint of a love hungry young Chinese bachelor, but rather a statistical fact: by the year 2020, approximately 30 million more men will reach adulthood and enter the mating market than women. That may not make Chinese men happy, but it’s become a huge annual boost to China’s online retailers. How? Back in the early 1990s, Chinese singles created a sort of anti-Valentine’s Day called Singles’ Day, an annual celebration of bachelorhood or bachelorettehood taking place on November 11. (numerically, 11/11, the date of lonely “1s.”)

Singles’ Day has since evolved into a major shopping holiday, similar to Black Friday or Cyber Monday here in the U.S. And just as U.S. corporations like Hallmark adopted Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to boost sales, Chinese online retailers like Alibaba, a massive online marketplace, have embraced the cultural phenomenon that is Singles’ Day.

And that embrace comes with good reason. China’s Alibaba online marketplace alone reported over $9 billion in sales on Tuesday, skyrocketing past the company’s previous Singles’ Day record of about $5.9 billion, MarketWatch reports. Those are stunning numbers — by comparison, U.S. consumers spent just $1.2 billion online during Black Friday last year, according to ComScore, and another $2.29 billion during Cyber Monday, per Adobe Systems. (Factoring in physical store sales, total Black Friday weekend spending in the U.S. last year was a hair over $57 billion.) Those numbers come just two months after Alibaba went public in a $25 billion U.S.-based public offering, which has since hit the record books as the world’s biggest-ever IPO.

Singles’ Day is a holiday that speaks to the rapidly growing purchasing power of China’s middle class as well as a culture increasingly focused on the acquisition of material wealth. Accordingly, Singles’ Day has spawned a bevy of outlandish tales that redefine consumerism — one Chinese man, in preparation for Singles’ Day, proposed to his girlfriend in a heart-shaped ring of 99 iPhone 6s that cost about $82,000, reports the Nanfang. The woman rejected his proposal.

But the Singles’ Day windfall for Chinese retailers like Alibaba is also an accident of China’s one-child policy, instituted in 1979. The policy led many Chinese—who historically have often preferred to have boys—to take advantage of cheap ultrasound technology that has allowed women to determine the sex of their child in early pregnancy, offering them the option to continue or terminate pregnancies based on gender. The resulting gender imbalance has actually led many of China’s surplus men (and some women as well) to view Singles’ Day as a chance to celebrate what they hope could be the last day of singledom—hence much of the expensive buying, which is tied to gift-giving to woo significant others.

Alibaba, which acts as a bazaar for online merchants, has taken advantage to a remarkable extent of growing disposable incomes in China. This year, the company posted the largest initial public offering at $25 billion, launching off its rapid growth in China.

Latest in stores opening earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving

Target on Monday announced its earliest ever Black Friday sale with plans to open doors at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, in an aggressive bid to boost holiday sales after a year of lackluster earnings and store closures.

The big-box retailer joined a growing list of stores that have pushed their Black Friday openings from post-dinner to pre-dinner hours, including Macy’s, Kohl’s and Sears.

“We know our guests are pulled in a million different directions as the holidays get underway, so we’re helping them save time and money by offering more access to Black Friday deals,” Target said in a statement.

The movement has also triggered a backlash from labor advocates and from competitors that have vowed to keep stores closed during the Thanksgiving holiday, including Coscto, Home Depot and Nordstrom.

Singles' Day is on Tuesday

China’s e-commerce firms are getting ready for the country’s biggest online shopping day Tuesday by hiring temporary staff and renting more warehouse space to deal with high volumes of orders.

The day known as Singles’ Day saw more than twice as much merchandise sold than on Cyber Monday in the U.S. last year. Singles’ Day—so called because the date 11/11 uses four “1″s to represent single people—began in 1993 at Nanjing University as a celebration of being single but gradually became a day when singles and couples alike could buy things for themselves.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba began to capitalize on the shopping fervor five years ago, offering staggering discounts to entice more customers. Last year Alibaba said it processed 254 million orders on the day worth $5.8 billion, The Financial Times reports.

After posting its $25 billion record-breaking IPO back in September, this year Alibaba aims to boost Singles’ Day sales by partnering with global brands and turning Singles Day into a worldwide event. This year is expected to be even bigger thanks to a 20%-increase in the total number of shoppers online, according to Boston Consulting Group.

[The Financial Times]