Amazon.com’s no-holds-barred fight to avoid collecting sales taxes in California is an abdication of corporate responsibility. The online behemoth is battling to repeal a state law enacted in July that would force it to do what every brick-and-mortar retailer in California is obligated to do: collect a sales tax of 7.25 percent from its customers.

Amazon, like other online retailers, has been shielded from collecting the tax in most states by a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that said only firms with a physical presence in a state could be required to collect the levy. Amazon has gotten around sales-tax collection in California and other states by setting up subsidiaries, which it says do not constitute a physical presence. The new California law requires all Internet retailers with affiliates or subsidiaries in the state to collect the tax. According to state estimates, this would generate some $200 million in annual taxes at a time when the state is desperate for revenues.

In response, Amazon has severed links with thousands of its affiliates in the state. It has tried to buy off political leaders by promising investments and jobs if they back off. And it is now trying to hijack California’s dysfunctional politics by spending millions to get a referendum on the ballot next June that would ask voters to rescind the law. It claims to have enough signatures to get the referendum, but whether a vote on budgetary issues is even constitutional is questionable.

Because of Amazon’s tactics, Democratic lawmakers are trying to pass the law again as a so-called urgency bill, which could not be challenged by referendum, by the end of the session this week.