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Promising Activity in US Senate on Sales Tax Front

Promising Activity in US Senate on Sales Tax Front

us senateThe US Senate is planning to vote on the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) this week. In March the Senate passed a vote of confidence with a large majority of 75 to 24. We hope a vote happens this week, and that it is in favor of the MFA.

While passage will be great news and show strong confidence in the bill, the House of Representatives is the body that must pass all finance/tax bills. That could still take several months.

The MFA is federal legislation that renders the Affiliate Nexus Tax laws null and void. The MFA is based on the concept that technology makes sales tax collection easy to accomplish, so it requires all retailers, whether online or offline, to collect sales tax for all states. When passed, it means advertisers can reinstate their affiliates in the 9 states where unconstitutional state laws were passed, devastating the income of 76,000 affiliate marketers.

The MFA is not only supported by the PMA but by online and offline retailers like Amazon, Overstock, Target and many others.

Last year the PMA helped build strong bi-partisan support in Congress, but the issue was derailed by other political activities. We are pretty confident we will eventually see MFA pass in 2013, although it will take time and work.

The PMA will be building a grassroots effort soon, so please stay tuned to join our efforts.

More information can be found on the PMA website. 

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Performance Marketing Association

The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) is a non-profit trade association founded in 2008. It is the only trade association representing the performance marketing industry.

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2 Comments
  • Bob
    April 27, 2013 at 11:53 am

    Internet Sales Tax certainly needs to be addressed, but the way it is being handled is completely wrong and will certainly not result in “Fairness”. How come the Senate has slammed this through without proper vetting of the issues? Sure, small brick and mortars that do no business on the internet think this will be a good thing, but how about those that do also sell on the internet and how how about those small businesses that are solely on the internet? The small brick and mortars think they are losing out to the Amazon.coms’s of the world because of the sales tax advantage, but the truth of the matter is they may gain back a small portion of sales, but it is much easier to buy online and people will continue to leave their local stores and purchase online. With this bill the small online sellers will be done in. In the end, the only winners will be large internet players.

    I wish Congress would take the time to do this intelligently. The bill could be written, so that all Sellers online could charge sales tax based on their rate and remit only to their state, so their would be less cross-jurisdictional issues and much simpler reporting. States could even enter a compact so that there could be the same rate from state to state. Why if I am selling from California or North Carolina or Colorado should I be responsible for collecting Illinois or Iowa or Pennsylvania Sales Tax? If I don’t pay it, are they going to send their state police to my door?

    This most certainly affect affiliates as well. Amazon.com might reinstate the affiliates in the states that passed affiliate nexus taxes, but they have been slowly moving against all of their affiliates anyways, with excluded categories and the liberal application of friends and family exemptions. If they are the only online retailer left standing, do they really need an affiliate program?

    I think this is a debacle. Let’s be smart… let’s take the time to do this right.

    This is a good read that exposes some of the issues.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/24/the-real-problem-with-the-internet-sales-tax.html

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