As you noticed, Dominic already posted his notes on the session, but here’s mine!  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 consisted of:

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

I thought it was well done.  Unfortunately there weren’t nearly as many people there as should have been.  Hopefully they’ll read this and know that they need to get informed before their business is blindsided with these tax issues.

Bullet Point Review!

• The use tax system really doesn’t work right now, hence why states are looking to tax online retailers.
• All this involves Nexus.
• If you make a commission on a sale, you’re affected.  Period.
• There’s a lot of misinformation out there – we’re trying to inform reporters enough to make them care about what’s really happening.
• There’s a different between an affiliate company and affiliates, which is somewhat difficult to properly explain to legislators.
• This is putting thousands of individuals out of business.
• We need to keep politics out of it – it’s not a Democrat or a Republican thing.
• SSTP (streamline sales tax project) not going to save us.
• It’s GOING to happen – don’t think you’re safe.
• This year it’s been introduced in 9 states – stopped in 7 of 9 (not RI or NC)
• Be sure to work with like minded people to get things done.
• It helps to have an internal advocate who knows the system’s ins & outs (a lobbyist or lobbying organization).
• The viral-ness worked well to defeat the bills.
• The CA bill would have passed had we not shown up, so it makes a BIG difference to stand up and help and make your voice heard.
• When talking to legislators, there are a few things to remember:
  • The term “affiliate” is very confusing, but they understand advertising and small business owner.
  • Don’t say you’re going to move out of state – if you do, you’re no longer their problem, so they don’t care.
  • Keep your analogies simple – don’t get too technical or use jargon they won’t understand (CPA, PPC, SEO, etc).
• There are ways around it in New York
  • First you have to meet the minimum sales threshold, so if you don’t make that you’re not affected.
  • You can rebut the nexus.
• They haven’t yet found a way to rebut the nexus in Rhode Island and it’s too early to tell for North Carolina.
• Merchants can just charge tax to keep affiliates – but it is something they have to start working on NOW in the back end to avoid being blindsided.
• Affiliates need to prepare your business for it and keep lines of communication open.
• Solutions: retain a sales and use tax attorney and understand the law as best you can.
• DO NOT: incorporate your business in another state, use a false address, follow advice of someone who’s unlicensed, follow advice of a lawyer for another party, or try to circumvent the law.  Working within the law is your best option.
• Being shady brings a bad name to the industry – your rep and the industries rep is under scrutiny

There was no time for a Q&A session because of all the awesome information they jam packed into that session.  It was really great and I’m still just sad to see that more people weren’t there.

Please help by spreading the word about what’s being referred to as the Advertising Tax! And for your pleasure, here’s the presentation:

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Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.

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 Alliance (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.

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So last week I was knee-deep in lobbying in Sacramento against CA AB 178 and then spent the rest of the week in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Expo.  So I didn’t have a lot of time to read my RSS feed.  So some of this stuff is a bit old, but don’t shoot the messenger.  If you were on top of your game you wouldn’t rely on this, so just remember that beggars can’t be choosers!

• Another guest post by me at Marketing Pilgrim on a new Social Media masters program being offered in the UK.
• You can save 5% when flying JetBlue to Affiliate Summit East in August.  I took them up on this discount for ASE last year in Boston and it totally turned JetBlue into my favorite airline!
• The face of Ebates.com, Paul Nichols, has left them to start his own consulting company.  Good luck Paul!
• Scott Jangro asks us all:  Is there room for two affiliate marketing organizations?
• Of course he asks because Affiliate Voice officially launched.  President Melanie Seery announced it on her blog.
• ShareResults came out with the BAMroll last week (The Big Affiliate Marketing roll).  Very cool idea.
• I wrote up my recap of the Web 2.0 Expo last week for the New Edge Media blog.
• Speaking of NEM, I’m no longer of their employ.  Wanna hire me?  Of course you do…  Email me!

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