As Expected, Amazon Terminated Its California “Associates” (including me)
As expected, Amazon.com yesterday terminated its advertising relationship with 25,000 California web publishers, including me, after Gov. Brown signed an “Advertising-Nexus Tax Law,” which would use advertising relationships as a “hook” to try to force Amazon and other out-of-state retailers to collect California Sales Tax. I’ve posted separately about this on my separate blog for LessonIndex.com: http://blog.lessonindex.com/2011/06/california-forced-amazon-to-stop-advertising-here/
I was interviewed (in my home office) and featured in a news segment on KTVU-2 news last night; you can view the segment here (but you’ll need to wait through a 15-second commercial before seeing the 2-minute, 15 second segment).
I was also interviewed today (June 30) by KPIX-5 for broadcast on tonight’s news.
Today, someone attempted to post on both of my blogs, falsely claiming to have a “fix” that would allow California web publishers to be reinstated by Amazon.
It’s a scam. Don’t respond to these crooks.
After this law was enacted, Amazon started a referendum petition to repeal the law, and spent several million dollars to gather signatures.
Last week, claiming that Amazon agreed to a “deal,” California legislators approved a new bill (AB 155) which would repeal the current version of the “Amazon Tax” and re-enact it effective September 15, 2012. The bill is now on the governor’s desk — but the governor wasn’t part of the “deal” and hasn’t yet indicated whether he’ll sign the bill into law.
The Associated Press reported that Amazon released a statement stating that the deal “will allow Amazon to bring thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of investment dollars to California, and welcome back to work tens of thousands of California-based advertising affiliates.”
The referendum deadline is September 27, two weeks before the deadline for the governor to sign or veto the legislation.
If Amazon doesn’t file the required half-million signatures with county election officials by September 27, the governor could veto the bill.
If Amazon files the required signatures, the governor would likely sign the bill, to avoid the referendum.
None of these options will bring California any additional sales tax revenue during the current fiscal year.
The governor did sign the revised law, and today Amazon began reinstating California web publishers into its performance-based advertising program. For more on this topic, see my comment (today) at http://blog.lessonindex.com/2011/06/california-forced-amazon-to-stop-advertising-here/#comments