For merchants, it will mean greatly-more-complicated accounting and tracking, plus collecting and paying sales taxes to states in which they actually have no physical nexus. This is probably unconstitutional.

(I am not a lawyer and don’t want to be one. Do not take this as legal advice or anything other than a rant by a disgruntled small business owner.)

As I’ve said, even though I live in NC, none of my websites are hosted on servers located in NC, so do I really have a physical-presence in the state when it comes to affiliate marketing?

That aside, is a commission-only marketing rep in a state really a nexus? What’s the difference between paying me a commission and placing a classified ad in a newspaper printed and distributed in NC? Will a paid ad eventually be considered a nexus and will the states try to collect sales tax as a result?

This is going to get messy.

The only thing that will resolve this issue will be when the Supreme Court issues a ruling or the US legislature passes laws that affect all the states and not just a few of them.

After all, this concerns interstate commerce and should fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government, not the individual states.

Still, I hold Amazon.com responsible for what they did. No matter what happens in the future, they’ve lost me as an affiliate and a customer.

It just galls me at this point whenever I think that I have thousands of links sending them potential customers and it’s going to take weeks to find and remove all of them.

It looks like I’ll probably be getting out of the affiliate marketing business this year.

Sigh.

Act on your dream!

JD

Though I never was an affiliate of Amazon, you know how I feel about affiliates dropping people because they live in certain states. That’s been happening to me since last year, and I’m just glad that not all of my affiliates have dropped me.

I really don’t blame Amazon on this one, though. The states have gotten greedy since the financial crisis hit. I expect to see more things coming as time goes by, especially if things don’t get any better.
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I don’t know what he has decided, if anything, but @Rich Owings said earlier today that he was meeting with his attorney to discuss corporate dissolution and moving out of NC.

I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that he’s not the only one. Some people earn pretty big money from Amazon – or at least they did.

Act on your dream!

JD

Welcome to our discussions.

I agree with you. I’m worried about who else will drop all their affiliates on a state-by-state basis. This could have even more serious repercussions.

Act on your dream!

JD