Damn california is now trying it. I know bodybuilding.com dropped ny affiliates last time for new york doing this. ( i screwed up the title meant to say CA not New york). ____________________ As you may already know, there are proposed California bills that could require the collection of sales tax for online purchases similar to bills proposed in other states and that could resemble the law that recently passed in New York State. At this time, a hearing date for AB 178 has been set for April 13, 2009. As with all laws, if passed, these laws may or may not apply to you and your business. Commission Junction is headquartered in California and impacted by the current California budget crisis. Nevertheless, we are opposed to the recently proposed legislation and are working with a lobbyist and other groups in hopes that we can influence the rejection of the bills' passage. Rest assured, we recognize that our industry and many of our clients may be impacted by these bills. The application of the bills is dependent on particular business and factual circumstances, and Commission Junction is not in a position to provide legal and tax advice regarding the bills. However, we encourage you to perform the appropriate due diligence as it relates to your business. You may be contacted by advertisers in the Commission Junction network as they perform their due diligence. Additionally, following are two sources of information on the proposed California bills that you may find helpful: http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a14/News_Room/Press/ 20090202AD14PR01.aspx http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html If you feel that you need more counsel on the bills, we recommend you seek independent tax and legal advice. Sincerely, Commission Junction
Yeah i mean to say ca. California is now thinking of doing that. So Affiliate merchants can see the state we entered in our CJ account information?
From what others are saying on other boards, since CJ is in California it could potentially affect ALL merchants in all states. It could even go beyond affiliate networks to pay per click such as google adsense based on current wording of the bill. Why isn't anyone paying attention here?
thanks god I am lucky enough not to put my self to much on CJ and invest so much money to get there bonus commission,and about the advice I think that is something other affiliate company wont do
This is really horrible if it passes. CJ might have to charge all merchants, not just california a fee for doing business in california. Google and other california based companies too. Its pretty far reaching how it is worded.
As long as we can afford to hire teachers that speak 40 different languages, and provide free health care for everyone but the working man, the end justifies the means. /sarcasm
Whats really scary is now their are similiar bills being introduced in minessota, tennessee, and hawaii. This is going to destroy affiliate marketing...
If I remember the way the NY bill was worded correctly, it basically states that any online merchant with a store in the state (of NY) would have to pay sales tax for purchases made by NY residents. The definition of a "store" was made so broad that it included affiliates who were residents of NY. Many affiliate programs just cut off NY affiliates because it was a lot easier and cheaper than setting up a system to track and pay sales tax to one individual state. If every state did this they'd have to pay sales tax to every state. Companies would have to set up whole departments just to track and pay the correct sales tax to each and every state. The government might be used to this type of wastefulness, but successful businesses are not. In the end this will lead to decreased overall tax revenue and poorer NY and (possibly) California affiliates.
What is going to happen is the affiliates will get dropped in a lot of programs for the states that do this.
ok so say for example, Widget-Store has one office and warehouse in Nevada. They never have to charge sales tax to people buying from California. However, now, if someone from any state clicks an a California affiliate's link, they have to pay CA sales tax?? This is horrible!!! How do we contact our senator or congressmen or whatever? I will tell them that if this passes, I am moving out of state! How is that for increasing revenues?? - Completely losing my business and I could imagine many others!
Thats the thing. It doesn't help revenue because tons of affiliates in new york were kicked out of various programs. The legislators are only going to help their competing states or even international affilaites in the end. Some affiliate programs aren't kicking out new york (or anyone else who plans to pass these laws) because either they don't meet the 10,000 dollar quoata or simply are ignoring the law because they aren't in said state and therefore think its unconstitutional / ridiculous to worry about other states laws.
By the way anyone know of a mail forwarding service? I remember there was a site that would mail all your stuff from an out of state address to your real address. I can't remember what site it was and if it would be right to use for this purpose.
Nevada rocks. No state income taxes and liberals aren't running the state (YET). I live in california, but Nevada definitely looks like a nice location to live someday. Actually im thinking a little farther north would be better away from all the illegal aliens. They are destroying nevada too just like the other southwest states. Like idaho or something is probably a good state to move long term. Don't you have to pay higher taxes when operating as a LLC? Anyone know of a good mail forwarding service to receive mail from out of state?