ASE09 Session: Advertising Tax Impact, Accomplishments and the Future

Session Description: Discussion on the Advertising Tax by industry leaders that have played a key role in organizing industry advocates and educating legislators on the impact of state tax nexus legislation.  The panel included:

• Brian Littleton, President / CEO, ShareASale.com (Twitter @Brianlittleton) (Moderator)
• Karen Garcia, Partner, GTO Management (Twitter @karengarcia)
• Beth Kirsch, Volunteer, Performance Marketing Association (Twitter @bethkirsch)
• Melanie Seery, President, Affiliate Voice (Twitter @mellies)

This session was very informative and gave a lot of information concerning the current problems affiliate marketers are having with some of the new tax laws, or rather the new interpretations, of the tax laws.  One of the most important facts given was that the definition of “Nexus” has been recently changed, or rather updated.  For a business to have Nexus, they must by physically present in the state.  The change in definition holds that affiliates living in a state count as Nexus in that state.  This is important because it requires all of the merchants to charge their customers the state sales tax.  The issue is not that the companies should charge this sales tax, but that it is often cheaper for them to drop their affiliates in whichever states are affected, instead of adding the ability to charge the sales tax on their site.

The chief purpose of this session was to bring people up to speed on the legislation that has been put into affect or has been defeated in several states such as New York, Hawaii, and California.  This is important because it will soon affect any state that charges sales tax, which is most of them.

From the standpoint of someone new to the industry this was a very important session to attend, as it helped to bring me up to speed, so to speak, with some of the major issues which are currently impacting Affiliate Marketing.