Amazon ends affiliate program in California after online sales tax passes

Amazon kills affiliate program in California over sales tax battle [GigaOM]

California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill into law that imposes state sales tax on all online transactions made within the state. Similar bills have been passed in a number of other states, despite of the efforts of online retailers to prevent their passage.

Each time a state passes an online sales tax bill, Amazon, the Internet's largest retailer, has terminated its associate programs in the state. Amazon Associates are third-party affiliate marketers for Amazon in each state that agree to sell products on Amazon and receive commissions for Amazon referrals and linking their websites to Amazon. 

Amazon has warned states considering levying sales tax for online sales that it would end its affiliate programs, and so far Amazon has made good on that warning.

California had well over 10,000 Amazon affiliates, and in a recent letter Amazon stated that all contracts with those affiliates were terminated as of June 29, 2011. As other states look to an online sales tax to fill in budget deficits, expect this issue to be raised again.

Comments

[Jonathan]

David,I am a long time fan of PHP, CSS and Flash. Like you, I am an avid reader but so much of the maraitel is rehashed and regurgitated (sorry for the visual). Everytime a new PHP or Flash book pops up at B&N, I am there with my wallet open. Your book was the first that inspired me to actually hunt down the author's site just to say, GOOD JOB. Not to say that other books were not well written and educational. It is how you write. No buyers remorse here. =) You have a new fan. Any suggestions on a reading maraitel for incorporating PHP into my Flash work. I use Flash MX, DreamWeaverMX, PHP 4.4, Apache 2.0 and whatever the latest MySQL that pops out. Your book was so backwards compatible that EVERYTHING worked. Current books on the market only seem to encompass the latest Flash, DreamWeaver, PHP (not much for OOP here), etc. I want a book like yours where everything works. Thanks for writing PHP Solutions. It is a true marvel. Regards,USMCskyFlashbyZ Blog and Fish

[Iliqn]

Glad you like PHP Solutions , Erik. Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8 does cover a lot of similar gonurd, as both books are intended to be a standalone introduction to working with PHP. The major difference is that Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8 shows you how to work with the automatic code generation of Dreamweaver server behaviors.To be honest, when writing PHP Solutions , I realized that readers who enjoyed Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8 might want to buy my next book. So PHP Solutions deliberately covers sufficient new gonurd for readers of the Dreamweaver book to feel as though they're adding to their knowledge. Quite how it would feel reading the books the other way round is hard to say.If you feel as though you have learned enough PHP from PHP Solutions to dive into the Dreamweaver code, you may find Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8 doesn't really teach you anything new. On the other hand, if you find yourself baffled by Dreamweaver's way of doing things, it does cover the full range of server behaviors and shows you how to build simple ones of your own to speed up the development process.

[Rina]

be very honoured if you puarsched a copy @Attila:I know it's not the cheapest. Unfortunately I didn't have any control over the final retail price.The history books are, of course, from someone else who's incidentally got the same name as me.Thanks a lot

[Nate]

Reports indicating now that WOW and Mediacom are the frontrunners. WOW appears to charge 65$ a month for 15mb down. No cap. Can't get prices on Mediacom, but they offer 50mb down. They have a 250gb a month cap, but it appears to be a soft cap with little enforcement (That I can find on forums). TWC is in the running, but seems unlikely. Then some investment groups, that appear to not even have the finances to facilitate the buy.

[Paul Templeton]

@ Concerned Customer
Carlyle group is the majority owner of Insight. It is an investment group. Their primary goal is to make a good return on their investment, not to run a cable company. The fact that they are selling Insight has nothing to do with competition having the best the best of them. It simply means Insight has grown in value enough that they can sell it at a decent profit.
In the end this may be good news for us because whomever buys may be willing to sink more money in their new acquisition to bolster it's future profits.

[concerned customer]

Where is your story about how you are selling your company to a larger rivial because competition has got the best of you?

[Paul Templeton]

Amazon is going to eventually have to cave on this as more and more states implement taxes for online purchases.
I have always figured that sooner or later states would have to do this. If not for the added revenues, then for fairness. Online retailers, up to this point, has had an unfair advantage over its brick and mortar counterparts.
My only problem with this is the possibility of double taxing (some states taxing where the sale is fulfilled while others tax where the sale is made).