Why shouldn't you pay your taxes?

[uniquestuff]

I'm sick and tired of all the crying about affiliate marketers and their programs not willing to pay their fare share. Why shouldn't you pay your taxes? While these firms are stuffing their pocket with mega millions of dollars from your hard work. They use you as scape goats to chisel off just enough to lower their corporate tax base. Then leave us a few crumbs and a pat on the head.
Until you get better at it then they just change the rules and percentages.

This group should be attempting to standardize state sales tax processes so that online retailers and affiliate programs will be able to collect them more easily and send the money to the appropriate jurisdiction. If enough states agree to a uniform framework, taxing Internet transactions could get us on the right track to interstate commerce. If I could run a travel agency ON 10% commission for many years. I think you all will live contributing less than 10% to your states.

[Linda Buquet]

Originally Posted by uniquestuff

I'm sick and tired of all the crying about affiliate marketers and their programs not willing to pay their fare share. Why shouldn't you pay your taxes? While these firms are stuffing their pocket with mega millions of dollars from your hard work. They use you as scape goats to chisel off just enough to lower their corporate tax base.

Hi uniquestuff,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for joining us.

I'm a little confused about your post. I know the affiliate/advertising tax situation pretty well
and have blogged about it as new issues have come up, but I'm afraid your post may confuse some people.

When you say "I'm sick and tired of all the crying about affiliate marketers and their programs not willing to pay their fare share. Why shouldn't you pay your taxes?" you are talking about merchants, not affiliates, right?

I don't understand this statement "They use you as scape goats to chisel off just enough to lower their corporate tax base." The tax I assume you are talking about has nothing at all to do with a merchant's corporate tax at all. In fact the tax does not even come out of their pocket, it's paid by the consumer.

So I'm wondering if I misunderstood your post or if you are talking about something different?

I do agree with some sort of sale tax standardization. If all online merchants had to charge sales tax, instead of just singling out merchants with affiliate programs and if all online sales tax was set at one rate instead of being so hard to calculate for all the different states, then I wouldn't be as opposed to it.

[uniquestuff]

A link from another online location brought me here. Mostly it was aimed at coalition it was building to defeat the CA bill AB 178 that our Governor Schwarzenegger refused to sign. Many of these groups such as Linkshare wrote in opposition along with the opposition letter from the Performance Marketing Alliance, co-signed by over 300 affiliates. Yet they want to live the good life, just not pay for it.

Then there is the companies like eBay and Google yes they pay a corporate tax.
Outside of their meager penitence of earnings paid to affiliates. Why shouldn't they be taxed on the income of the sale to their advertisers? Also eBay changed their web page when I emailed a copy of it to almost every elected official I could get an address for that bragged about the in Q4 2008 gross merchandise volume, the value of all successfully closed listings on eBay alone was $13.6 billion dollars which from what I can discern maybe 1% of the sales generated any state tax collected and then some I know that collected it do not even have a resale tax certificate, so they pocketed the 9.25%.
Do the math $13 billion / 50 states is $260000000.00 per state -1% tax is $2600000.00 or how about a flat tax of 5% = $13000000.00
that if all things were equal per state they would have to pay teachers, health workers, emergency workers, etc. and who knows what other benefits we could gain.
Collectively we could help our country. Thank God we run to the aid of every country when disaster stirkes when are we going to help ourselves?

[Linda Buquet]

Originally Posted by uniquestuff

A link from another online location brought me here. Mostly it was aimed at coalition it was building to defeat the CA bill AB 178 that our Governor Schwarzenegger refused to sign. Many of these groups such as Linkshare wrote in opposition along with the opposition letter from the Performance Marketing Alliance, co-signed by over 300 affiliates. Yet they want to live the good life, just not pay for it.

Then there is the companies like eBay and Google yes they pay a corporate tax.
Outside of their meager penitence of earnings paid to affiliates. Why shouldn't they be taxed on the income of the sale to their advertisers?

Yes I'm familiar with AB178 and the coalition efforts.

But you say "Yet they want to live the good life, just not pay for it."
Again the tax is not an income tax, no one is trying to avoid that. And it's not a tax affiliates have to pay so no one is trying to avoid that either. It's a tax merchants have to collect from CONSUMERS and pay the state, so it does not come out of the merchants pocket either so they aren't trying to avoid paying their own taxes.

"Why shouldn't they be taxed on the income of the sale to their advertisers?"

None of it has to do with being taxed on the income of the sale to advertisers. The tax has nothing to do with income. The tax only affects the sale to the actual consumer not advertisers. So I don't know what you are referring to.

Are you misunderstanding the tax issue, or am I not understanding what you are trying to say? Not trying to argue just trying to understand because it kinda feels like we are speaking a different language or something.

[uniquestuff]

Online merchants are using the no sales tax enforcement issue.
To their price advantage by selling online and at auction sites that have no taxation oversight. There are many small businesses who use their wholesale buying power to go online and list new items to undercut other b&m business’s up to tax margin of 10%.
Neighborhood businesses that are paying taxes where a portion goes to there city services as well.
I laugh when I hear people getting worked up over a Wal-Mart moving in there town or city.
While online retailers are robbing them blind.

These companies are using affiliates to do their demonstrating.
Compiling internet sales tax, net neutrality, all in one charge against everything related.
So my question is why are affiliate groups mounting the biggest opposition?

[uniquestuff]

Better yet why is Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent promise not to sign any legislation that would force internet retailers to collect sales tax was designed specifically to keep companies like Overstock.com and Amazon doing business with affiliates in California.
What does collecting a sales tax have to do with affiliates?
Again I state the internet retailers and auction houses who brag they are setting on
billions of dollars of cash are using the affiliates to fight for their irresponsible action, and exclusionary privelege over your home town merchant.
John McCain stated when campainging for his Presidencey:
''I sponsored the law in the Senate that put in place the current moratorium on Internet taxation. The Internet continues to be the greatest engine of economic growth in America today, and we must not strangle it with new taxes. Online sales totaled $40 billion in 1999, that if taxed would have taken $2 billion from hard-working American families. As President, I will keep the Internet a tax-free zone. Studies show that taxing the Internet would reduce e-commerce by 75% - a blow that would limit growth and kill jobs.''
So my reply is so you took $40 billion dollars out of the economy to feed a much smaller work force. Who paid the price? The people on unemployment today.

It's time for our politicans to get their hands out of internet billion dollar bank account and do the hard work, standing up for what right. Apply the standard of the Sherman Antitrust Act per si