PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - Sept 5

Sept 5 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in The New York Times business pages on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* To avoid paying tens of millions of dollars, Amazon.com Inc is seeking a voter referendum on whether online retailers should pay sales taxes.

* The United States Postal Service is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.

* If the Justice Department succeeds in blocking the $39 billion merger of AT&T Inc and T-Mobile, the deepest sighs of relief may well come from the executives at Sprint Nextel , the country's third-largest wireless carrier.

* Samsung Electronics Co will not showcase the Galaxy Tab 7.7, its latest tablet computer, at one of the largest electronics shows after Apple Inc won a second injunction blocking sales of the computer in Germany.

* A succession of government officials at a weekend conference called for China's automakers to shift their focus from making more cars and toward producing more fuel-efficient and more advanced models, including gasoline-electric hybrids and all-electric cars.

* From the first weekend in May to Labor Day, a period that typically accounts for 40 percent of the film industry's annual ticket sales, domestic box-office revenue is projected to total $4.38 billion, an increase from last year of less than 1 percent, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data.

* When Michael Arrington, the editor of the popular Website TechCrunch, told his bosses at AOL Inc that he was forming a venture capital company to finance some of the technology start-ups that his site wrote about, they invested about $10 million in his fund.

(Compiled by Suzannah Benjamin; Bangalore Equities Newsdesk +91 80 4135 5800; within U.S. +1 646 223 8780)