Alright guys, so we all lost our Affiliate programs. What are the legal implications for just putting down an out-of-state friend's address in our Amazon account information?
Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
151–160 of 168 posts
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love it when everyone works together to make a lose/lose/lose situation happen.
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…
Like extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, then somehow being surprised when the rate increases of people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs.
Wow. I've never seen a better example of the phrase correlation does not imply causation.
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks ... people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs > tax credit for low-income families who have children ... low-income birth rate increases Citations please
http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=428343# http://youngilkim.webs.com/Kim_2009.pdf https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi...
>http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits...
I think the poster was looking for evidence that this actually occurred, not someone else saying that it will.
I didn't look at the others.
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
So Amazon has physical buildings in Texas, and Amazon disagrees with that state's position that they have a physical presence in Texas. Only a lawyer could argue for such a twisted interpretation of reality with a straight face.
Amazon doesn't have buildings in Texas. A subsidiary company does. That company is required to pay taxes in Texas. Amazon however, by not having a presence there is not required to pay taxes. This is old hat and a tactic used by almost every successful company in the world for at least 150 years. In the long run it is far more beneficial for consumers and corporations. The only ones that lose out are the governments…
Small companies lose out also, because in general only large-ish companies can afford the overhead of maintaining shell companies. (Not just for this particular loophole, but for lots of loopholes involving shell companies.)
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#155I am pretty sure the payment made to Associates Program is classified by Amazon as "advertising fee". I'm not sure how it would hold up against any accounting audits by IRS, for example. Amazon do send 1099-MISC to Associates Program member.
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ou…
Oh come on. The reason Amazon doesn't want to collect sales tax is because it would make it more expensive to buy stuff on Amazon. They're well aware that few/no people actually pay their sales tax for internet purchases.
I'm not arguing on the rights/wrongs of this discussion, but this is what it really comes down to.
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of them already do, e.g. local booksellers. They might not be price-competitive, but if Amazon provides the linker with no incentive to link Amazon versus linking some other bookstore (say, their favorite local bookstore), some percentage of linkers will (I would guess) defect from choosing to link Amazon. For example, I have a site with some book reviews which currently links the Amazon page for all the books,…
Even if I were making money on Amazon's affiliate program and it got cut I would continue linking to Amazon. For the reader using my site to find information going to an online location where they can purchase the book easily will help them come back to my site. Especially if I have diverse traffic from around the United States or bigger linking to a retailer that is more likely to ship to my readers will let me keep…
Like many here, I have many book reviews myself that link to amazon. I link to amazon because that's what's most convenient for most people. I do not use an affiliate link because it's a conflict of interest. In the past magazines would have honest product reviews that sometimes were negative. Nowadays nearly every magazine only has glowing reviews and no negative ones. Editors tell writers that bad reviews will result in lost advertising revenue since publishers/manufacturers threaten to stop advertising in magazines with bad reviews of their products. Contrary to this I have many reviews that rip apart products and point out their numerous defects. I also have reviews that praise good products. Perhaps some people who read my reviews notice this and find the integrity refreshing or bizarrely archaic. In any case I certainly don't need the pitiful income from affiliate links, it makes more sense for me to just use a plain link.
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=428343# http://youngilkim.webs.com/Kim_2009.pdf https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi...
> http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... I think the poster was looking for evidence that this actually occurred, not someone else saying that it will. I didn't look at the others.
> The University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz found that for every week that unemployment benefits are extended, the average duration of unemployment goes up by 0.16 to 0.20 weeks. According to a paper coauthored by Alan Krueger, President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, the unemployed more than triple the time they spend job-hunting, from 20 minutes per week to 70 minutes per week, in the weeks right before benefits expire.
Should read passed the title next time.
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... I think the poster was looking for evidence that this actually occurred, not someone else saying that it will. I didn't look at the others.
> The University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz found that for every week that unemployment benefits are extended, the average duration of unemployment goes up by 0.16 to 0.20 weeks. According to a paper coauthored by Alan Krueger, President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, the unemployed more than triple the time they spend job-hunting, from 20 minutes per week t…
The referenced papers (which aren't actually referenced) are hard to find.
I did find this though:
One of the best-known empirical results in public Önance and labor economics is the ìspikeî in the exit rate from unemployment around the expiration of jobless beneÖts (see e.g., Robert Mo¢ tt, 1985; Lawrence Katz and Bruce Meyer, 1990a; Katz and Meyer, 1990b). This sharp surge in the hazard rate is widely interpreted as evidence that recipients are waiting until their beneÖts run out to return to work
However, from the same paper:
Our main finding is that the way in which unemployment spells are measured has a large e§ect on the magnitude of the spike at exhaustion, both in existing studies and in our Austrian data...
We conclude that most job seekers in Austria are not waiting to return to work until their UI benefits are exhausted. Rather, a large fraction simply leave the unemployment registry once their benefits end and they are no longer required to register to maintain their eligibility for benefit
Re: Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get it now... tedunangst and ojbyrne claim, that I would pay no tax, and you say that I still pay WA tax. So if Callifornia would collect its sales/use tax as well, I would pay tax twice, or no WA tax, or what?
I live in Seattle, WA, and therefore I pay WA state sales tax when I purchase items from Amazon. If I lived in California, I would not pay sales tax.
Aha, I missed that before. Thanks for your explanation!