Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes

boingboing.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 168 posts

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

#91

Post by Goronmon »

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…

>Uh, who brought in residents of different states?

That's the whole point of this issue. It involves parties in different states.

You're argument is that if someone from state A does business in state B, then it is the responsbility of the business in state B to collect the sales tax required by state A.

How can you not understand why this is a terrible argument? It means that every business would have to know and calculate the sales tax for all 49 other states and that every purchase would require proof of residence to verify which sales tax needed to be charged. Then the business would have to deal with filing taxes in 50 separate states.

Ugh...I can't even imagine how this makes any sense to anyone.

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

#92

Post by jbooth »

anamax wrote: post #88
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".

> 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 res…

Amazon's different because they're bigger than a rounding error, basically.

The principle is "same amount of taxes for everyone". I don't live in California but if I did, I wouldn't be huge on the idea of tax-disadvantaging local businesses against out of state businesses.

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

#93

Post by joezydeco »

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…

So what about actual Amazon employees, like Lab126 in Cupertino? Are they hiding Amazon affiliation through fancy corporate footwork and shell companies?

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

#94

Post by pavel_lishin »

cheez wrote: post #79
T-hawk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Like extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, then somehow being surprised when the rate increases of people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs. Or creating a tax credit for low-income families who have children, then being surprised when the low-income birth rate increases. In the politici…

> Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Come on. Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society. Do you really think they are oblivious or do you think they're just looking out for #1?

> Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society.

[citation needed]

Not that I necessarily disagree, mind you; nor do I want to drag the whole social vs. whatever we call it now intelligence.

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

#95

Post by ellisd »

This sounds like a terrible idea from a technology standpoint as each county and city seemingly has different sales tax rates. To comply with taxation, every out of state company will now need to pull the active sales tax rates for the shipping destination and then apply this to the order.

What happens if the rate isn't kept up to date?

Are states like California actually ready to supply this data in a form that is easily consumable as a web service rather than a PDF file, to avoid hindering interstate commerce?

Personally I don't think Amazon is completely the victim in this situation. Their attorneys spend quite a bit of time and money figuring out how to avoid paying tax. I interviewed once for an Amazon.com company who's "primary" development offices were in California, yet their checks came from their "legal" headquarters in Nevada. Shady at best... for example: http://www.lab126.com

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

#96

Post by btilly »

leot wrote: post #86
btilly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Amazon offers store fronts for third party sellers. The most likely possibility is that that purchase is from such a seller, in which case fulfillment starts from their facilities, not Amazon's.

If you are in California, then Amazon should have also collected sales tax on that purchase.

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

#97

Post by dangrossman »

Hisoka wrote: post #48

I suspect Amazon secretly wish they could just get rid of their entire affiliate program. If it was so profitable, they wouldn't be getting rid of affiliates left and right. If you think about it, most people who buy thru an Amazon affiliate link probably would've bought it from Amazon anyway (due to its huge brand recognition, dominance in Google, etc). So, when an affiliate refers a sale, sometimes they're losing m…

The reason for Amazon to continue running an affiliate program isn't to drive awareness of the site but to provide the massive number of deep product links that push Amazon results to the top of search results. Amazon's search traffic is in part dependent on the affiliate program.

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

#98

Post by innernette »

archon810 wrote: post #68
jarin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as long as your business has a presence in CA (like your office or home office) you still have to pay taxes. Of course, you could register your business in a state that doesn't disclose stakeholder info, like Nevada or those Wyoming shell companies. Edit: definitely not a lawyer

I don't mind paying taxes on my earnings from the affiliate program. It's not like the government would expect me to pay taxes on the cost of the goods sold. It's the amount made from the affiliate program. Amazon is a significant source of income for me in California, and I was thinking of creating a California LLC this year anyway to shield from lawsuits. I'm now going to seriously think about doing it in Delaware…

If you need specific advice about tax liability or incorporation decisions, you may want to talk to an attorney.

Incorporating in Delaware does not necessarily make a corporation a Delaware resident only. If a corporation operates in California, it is probably subject to California taxes. In general, a corporation can be a resident of both the state of incorporation and the state of its principal place of business.

For sales/use tax, owning property in California or having regular employees in California may be enough.

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

#100

Post by dangrossman »

tedunangst wrote: post #66
jonknee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have local managers for every region and sub-region. Amazon doesn't have a manager assigned to Sonoma County to make sure that everything's on the up and up regarding Sonoma County tax laws. Amazon's actually much better equipped to handle the problem because of their size. It would be a real nightmare for a small site that can't afford even a single full time accountant.

How many small sites that can't afford a single accountant are running affiliate programs?

Hundreds of them. Anyone can set up a copy of iDevAffiliate (and many do), and thousands of small businesses have programs run through networks like ShareASale, Clixgalore and CJ. You can start a professionally managed 3rd party affiliate program on a network for $75-350.

There are hundreds of thousands of products with affiliate programs on ClickBank. Most of them are info products and software being sold by an individual with no employees.

Post reply on HN