Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by ignifero » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 2:10 PM UTC

zcid wrote: post #147

mkramlich wrote: post #139

Earlier 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…

That view of (democratically elected) governmnets is scary.

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

#162

Post by jerf » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

I carefully restrained myself from accusing you of having a predetermined conclusion and rationalizing it at all costs to logic, sanity, and undesired side effects, but after seeing your studious refusal to address the situation as it actually is, rather than how you'd like it to be, I regret my restraint.

I'm sorry this is actually an issue about cross-state jurisdiction, rather than the duty of large companies to be responsible to society and dutifully pay as many taxes as they can, but this is the situation as it actually is.

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

#163

Post by allwein » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 6:54 PM UTC

zacharypinter wrote: post #131

evgen wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only we had machines which could perform these difficult lookups for us, and directories of information that could be queried to determine which taxes apply for a given address, along with some way for these machines to communicate so that different tax jurisdictions could keep the sales tax information current... Oh, that's right, we do. The claim that determining the applicable sales tax for any given shipping/bi…

I disagree. One small example: many jurisdictions tax different categories of items at different rates. This means that you'd have to start off by knowing those rules and categorizing everything accordingly. After that, you have tons of edge cases to work out, e.g., what happens if I group two different categories of items into a special package? What percentage of the package is taxed at what rate? Or, what if diffe…

Adding on to your excellent point, which tax configuration do you use for calculating the tax? If the affiliate is what causes nexus, do you use the affiliates local tax rates for calculating tax obligation or do you use the customer's local tax rates for calculating tax obligation? It seems absurd to me that I would pay more in taxes if I click on a link from Alice's website than I would if I were linked to the same product on Bob's website.

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

#164

Post by calloc » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:28 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #123

calloc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is located in Washington, as a convenience to the user and to the state Amazon collects tax in accordance with Washington state law if someone ("user A") purchases an item from its site in Washington. This way "user A" in Washington doesn't owe the state any taxes for that purchase, and doesn't have to declare it on any tax forms. Now someone in California ("user B") purchases an item from Amazon. Amazon is lo…

Look, if we want a competitive marketplace, it makes sense that everyone operates under the same tax constraints. This isn't a pro-tax, anti-tax, pro or anti commerce clause thing. It's just basic economics, the best services will float to the top that way.

No, it isn't fair to the retailer that ships to 50 states, since they unlike the local only retailer now have to file and keep up with tax laws for 50 states, not even considering all of the counties and stuff like that.

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

#165

Post by gte910h » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 9:27 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #40

gte910h wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or do the obscenely complex logic for each of the tens of thousands of jurisdictions each year required to calculate sales tax.

Not true! Amazon already has all of that obscenely complex logic coded up! Amazon allows third party vendors to sell through Amazon. Amazon knows for each vendor of what states they are resident in, and properly collects sales tax in that company's behalf where that is required.

And for a select few of those vendors, they do have sales tax modules. For another quantity of people, they just bake sales tax into the cost of the item:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/102-8466...

Who knows who's calculating the sales tax for the select retailers.

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

#166

Post by gte910h » Fri, Jul 01, 2011, 2:39 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #100

tedunangst wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indi…

Thanks dan. Links like this are why I read HN

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

#167

Post by Hisoka » Sat, Jul 02, 2011, 12:17 AM UTC

DanLivesHere wrote: post #137

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…

This is incredibly unlikely. Bringing people to a store, virtual or otherwise, is incredibly valuable for that store. Amazon has literally 1000s of people doing that, constantly. Instead of finding a good/best price on an iPod, I send people to Amazon, etc. Don't underestimate that value.

don't overestimate it either. I know people who make tons of spam thin pages ranking for searches like "Nikon D40 camera Amazon coupon". All they have is a link to the Amazon page, and they make lots of money thru it. That's a sale Amazon would have irregardless

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

#168

Post by mkramlich » Sat, Jul 02, 2011, 5:16 AM UTC

emmett wrote: post #140

mkramlich wrote: post #139

Earlier 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 owns a company that has physical buildings in Texas, and disagrees as to whether that constitutes a tax nexus or not. Pretty easy to argue with a straight face! Tax law is a matter of technicality, not "does it seem about right".

If I own a house, I own a house. If I own a company (which is just a paper entity, made-up), and that company owns the house, then, I pretty much actually own the house. Maybe not in a technical legal sense, but in a reality sense.

Always be wary of "paper reality" created by lawyers. It's not real. It can be a useful tool, a useful abstraction, but it can also separate us from physical reality, and can be used for evil purposes, and produce non-sensical results.

Another point related to this is that there's a lot of precedent in the courts where, even in a case where someone is claiming to be doing something which is technically consistent with the law, and/or are very carefully exploiting a loophole or ambiguity, there are judges who give rulings based on the principle of, "if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck... guess what? it's a f*cking duck!"