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Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

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Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#81

Post by SoftwareMaven »

jbooth wrote: post #24
btilly wrote: post #11

Some important background on this. At issue here is sales tax. By state law, the tax is owed by the citizens to the state no matter where they make the purchase. To make enforcement easier, the tax is supposed to be collected by businesses. In theory the tax is owed regardless, but as a practical matter when businesses do not collect the tax, customers don't volunteer the information and the state loses revenue. This…

I don't think it's at all unreasonable for states to want to enforce the tax that's already on the books and supposed to be already reported/collected, as you state. The problem is the hangup with the commerce clause. Catalog companies didn't threaten to make a significant % of all sales into postal sales, the internet does. I'd hope that we could find a way to straighten things out where the state can still assess t…

I can totally understand why Amazon doesn't want to have to collect municipal sales tax. Every city in my state has a different potential tax rate, with a percentage determined by the state, by the county, by whether the city participates in mass transit, etc. Same zip codes have different taxes.

Trying to manage that across the country is an ugly proposition! At least the EU has chosen a single VAT (even if it is outrageous! :).

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#82

Post by jbooth »

jerf wrote: post #70
jbooth wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon (or more accurately, the purchaser) should be paying all sales taxes in the state where the purchaser lives, period. Seems cut and dried to me. If the corner store has to run sales tax, Amazon should too. I don't see why a "[adjective] business decision in the face of [adjective] and [adjective] legislation" is in any way different from "skirt paying sales tax".

You say it's "cut and dried" at the same time that you are clearly reaching beyond what the laws say. It is not cut and dried as to what one state may make a resident of a completely different state do. Amazon probably is correct, and forcing Amazon to collect sales tax for your state probably is an overreach. It should be pointed out, since so many people forget this in this discussion, that as a resident of a state…

Uh, who brought in residents of different states?

California residents should be paying the California sales tax on things they buy, and the state has a right to make that happen. Nobody's talking about forcing Colorado residents to do anything.

I agree that they should find a way to make it a reasonable burden for Amazon to collect that information, but if local retailers have to collect and Amazon doesn't, that seems unfair and noncompetitive.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#83

Post by nerfhammer »

allwein wrote: post #8
krisneuharth wrote: post #5

I received notice today from 4 of my affiliate programs that they are terminating their programs in California. I expect the remaining few to notify me soon enough. I may end up registering again with these program using an Oregon address if I feel like my site is something I still want to work on if this goes down the way it is looking.

Perhaps you'd like to consider a Wyoming shell company? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2708336

With your legal address in Wyoming wouldn't you need a personal address to which Amazon would need to send correspondence?

Or if you open a bank account for this legal enttity, wouldn't the bank want an address they can actually correspond to?

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#84

Post by [deleted] »

jbooth wrote: post #24
btilly wrote: post #11

Some important background on this. At issue here is sales tax. By state law, the tax is owed by the citizens to the state no matter where they make the purchase. To make enforcement easier, the tax is supposed to be collected by businesses. In theory the tax is owed regardless, but as a practical matter when businesses do not collect the tax, customers don't volunteer the information and the state loses revenue. This…

I don't think it's at all unreasonable for states to want to enforce the tax that's already on the books and supposed to be already reported/collected, as you state. The problem is the hangup with the commerce clause. Catalog companies didn't threaten to make a significant % of all sales into postal sales, the internet does. I'd hope that we could find a way to straighten things out where the state can still assess t…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#85

Post by scarmig »

tedunangst wrote: post #65
scarmig wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet somehow companies like WalMart and Target manage this terrific feat. It'd be better if there were a unified system of national sales tax. But for a company Amazon's size, it's a laughable idea that it's somehow impossible to do this magnificent feat of implementing a lookup table.* The hard part is keeping things up to date, but a good faith effort to do the previous would get Amazon pretty far. *I worked for…

I have no idea why you were downvoted. If the dudes running walmart.com can write code to figure out the appropriate sales tax for each item, the dudes at amazon.com should be able to as well.

Naturally, lots of people are pissed off at this turn of events. For good reason, too--everyone's losing here, including the State, Amazon, consumers, and various developers and start ups. Even the shadowy backers of the legislation (WalMart, Target, etc.) don't win an even playing field, because Amazon still isn't going to pay sales tax.

Since many people's livelihoods are very threatened by this frack-up, it's not too surprising that there'll be some itchy fingers.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#86

Post by leot »

btilly wrote: post #77
leot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I order from Amazon the delivery starts in CA almost the same day. Perhaps there's some legal entity funny-business going on to make all of its CA fulfillment not count as such, but what else would you call the place that ships me the package?

Are you sure it starts in CA? I just looked through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Fulfillment_and_ware... and there is no California location listed. I live in California, and I've received lots of packages from Nevada.

Just went through my email logs of Amazon purchases. One thing I bought from Amazon looks like it started in "City of Commerce", but this was a few days after I purchased it -- perhaps they fulfilled elsewhere and flew it over to be picked up by FedEx in CA?

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#87

Post by InclinedPlane »

jbooth wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it's "cut and dried" at the same time that you are clearly reaching beyond what the laws say. It is not cut and dried as to what one state may make a resident of a completely different state do. Amazon probably is correct, and forcing Amazon to collect sales tax for your state probably is an overreach. It should be pointed out, since so many people forget this in this discussion, that as a resident of a state…

Uh, who brought in residents of different states? California residents should be paying the California sales tax on things they buy, and the state has a right to make that happen. Nobody's talking about forcing Colorado residents to do anything. I agree that they should find a way to make it a reasonable burden for Amazon to collect that information, but if local retailers have to collect and Amazon doesn't, that see…

So if an amazon customer living in California buys an item that is fulfilled from Arizona, why should a California sales tax be involved? Why are we suddenly redefining the meaning of local sales tax? Are we now to the point where every state with a local sales tax will also impose tariffs on out-of-state goods? That seems to be the argument here.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#88

Post by anamax »

jbooth wrote: post #56
InclinedPlane wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales tax tends to be 5-10%, affiliate kickbacks tend to be less than that, which means that the increased revenue from affiliate links is in the same ballpark. It would be bad enough if these laws forced amazon to pay sales tax on purchases where the affiliate lived in the same state as the purchaser. Instead these laws force amazon to pay sales tax on all sales where the purchaser lives in a state where there is a…

Amazon (or more accurately, the purchaser) should be paying all sales taxes in the state where the purchaser lives, period. Seems cut and dried to me. If the corner store has to run sales tax, Amazon should too. I don't see why a "[adjective] business decision in the face of [adjective] and [adjective] legislation" is in any way different from "skirt paying sales tax".

> Amazon (or more accurately, the purchaser) should be paying all sales taxes in the state where the purchaser lives, period. Seems cut and dried to me. If the corner store has to run sales tax, Amazon should too.

Actually, the "corner store" doesn't have to collect sales tax. The "corner store" collects sales tax for the jurisdiction it is in. (Car dealers are an exception because of licensing.)

CA says that its residents owe sales tax on anything that they use within the state. For example, if a CA resident walks into a store in Nevada, buys something, and takes said something back to CA, CA thinks that it is owed sales tax.

I've never seen a Nevada store collect CA sales tax for sales to CA residents. I've never even seen someone suggest that said store has an obligation to collect CA sales tax. Why is Amazon different?

And yes, most Nevada stores will ship.

Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

#89

Post by jbooth »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #87
jbooth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, who brought in residents of different states? California residents should be paying the California sales tax on things they buy, and the state has a right to make that happen. Nobody's talking about forcing Colorado residents to do anything. I agree that they should find a way to make it a reasonable burden for Amazon to collect that information, but if local retailers have to collect and Amazon doesn't, that see…

So if an amazon customer living in California buys an item that is fulfilled from Arizona, why should a California sales tax be involved? Why are we suddenly redefining the meaning of local sales tax? Are we now to the point where every state with a local sales tax will also impose tariffs on out-of-state goods? That seems to be the argument here.

Because it was purchased by a Californian from California? I don't get how Arizona's involved at all, Best Buy prob has distribution centers there too, it's not a part of Best Buy's point of sale tax calculations.

Again, it's not a tarriff on out-of-state goods, it's assessing the same tax on out-of-state as you do on in-state goods.

A non-reverse-tarriff, if you will. Level playing field is all I'm arguing for here, don't see how that message keeps getting lost.

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