Who knew affiliate marketers had a lobbying firm?
I’m not sure they’re registered Lobbyists in Congress yet, but the Performance Marketing Alliance has weighed in on the ‘Amazon.com v. New York’ Appeals Court by filing an amicus brief on the side of Amazon.
If you’re no sure what’s going on I’ll give you a little background. In early July I posted about Amazon terminating affiliates in certain states.
New York State had passed a law saying that an “affiliate” in New York (some poor guy like you with an affiliate product link on his web site) of Amazon.com, Overstock.com, etc. constituted a “physical presence” in their state and was subject to New York State sales taxes that the companies had to collect and pay.
Incredibly, Amazon lost the court case against this in New York. While waiting for the Appeals Court, several other states jumped in with the same kind of laws, causing Amazon to simply terminate affiliates in those states.
Who loses? The affiliates. Also, the states no longer collect income taxes from the profits of those affiliate sales. And of course, the online retailers lose marketers who drive their sales.
Who wins? No one.
Which brings me back to the Performance Marketing Alliance. It’s a not-for-profit trade association that attempts “to connect, inform and advocate” on behalf of affiliate marketers, which they estimate at about 200,000 people.
If you are an affiliate marketer take a look at the Performance Marketing Alliance site. They’re just getting off the ground, but have some basic information and a fall special on memberships..
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Amazon has terminated affiliates in North Carolina and Rhode Island and is threatening to do the same in California, Connecticut and Hawaii (Fox Business News reported that Hawaii is already on the banned list).
States are getting desperate for money and are looking to Internet sales to provide it. Most states require their residents to keep track of online purchases and remit sales taxes on all out of state purchases. Right. You pay your sales taxes every year, don’t you?
Heck, I remember a few years back Florida started going through all of the Customs declarations from residents that had been on cruise ships, looking to collect state sales tax on T-shirts and bottles of rum brought back into the country.
Continue reading .
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