Amazon Cuts Off North Carolina Affiliates

Amazon.com has reportedly cut off all affiliates in North Carolina as a preemptive response to the sales tax change being pushed through the state legislature. The Seattle-based online retailer warned affiliates last week that such a move might be necessary, but the early shutoff seems to be a move in hopes of swaying opinion on the proposed legislation. "Local affiliates say they were 'blind-sided' by the company's action. 'I got this e-mail at 4:30 this morning,' said James Barrett, a technology consultant from Winston-Salem. 'It wasn't saying your account will be shut down. It said it is shut down. That just blew me up right there.' Barrett said that he is frustrated at lawmakers for considering the tax, but equally aggravated with Amazon. 'They're trying to tick off all their associates and get them to call down to Raleigh,' Barrett said. 'I think that is pretty tacky. That's not the way to use people who are referring business to your business.'"

Comments

Re:Thanks, Amazon!

[BitZtream]

Right, Amazon will continue this practice if the law passes ... they'll give up income because they have to pay tax on it ...

Are you fucking kidding?

Whats better:

Make $0 and not have to pay anything.

Or

Make $200,000,000 and pay $100,000 to the state.

I'm not Amazon, but I'm pretty sure I'd go ahead and take that extra $199,900,000 and move on, even if it costs me an extra $100,000 the first year to make my shitty accounting system do it. Of course, if their accounting system can't handle it, I suggest using QuickBooks, which interestingly enough seems to have no problem dealing with taxation in North Carolina, as well as every other state in the union. Seems odd that a global retailer couldn't deal with it.

Guess we're just going to have to switch to a federal sales tax that gets distributed to the states.

The states can not afford to lose taxes from the people who get cut off.

Sure they can. People will buy locally and pay taxes, no loss to the state in any way, and it actually does promote businesses IN the community. On the other hand, Amazon loses all revenue possible from that avenue.

I'm sorry, who was the loser again?

Re:Too bad for some...

[BitZtream]

No real lose than is there to anyone is it?

Oh no... I can't buy from Amazon ... and there isn't any other business in my state that I can buy from like Amazon ... none at all ...

Of course, there are thousands of businesses in the state that offer, guess what, everything that Amazon does.

So Amazon moves to another country, won't happen any time soon, but lets just pretend it does. How long do you think its going to be before there are taxes in other countries to deal with this sort of thing ... oh wait, what ? There already are other countries with taxes that deal with this sort of thing? You're kidding, and you mean countries other than the US tax goods coming into their country? You've got to be kidding me?!!?!?!?!

Unless you lie, you're already paying tax when items come into your country from others. You're probably just completely ignorant of the fact that you owe taxes on items purchased out of your country, but you most certainly DO owe them in the case of almost EVERY purchase you can possibly make outside your country.

Its easy to say 'haha look at the US, stupid slobs' when you're just completely ignorant of your own laws. Twit.

Re:Unfair?

[BitZtream]

Then why does Walmart have no problem with it?

They only need the address of the affiliate, that makes it far simpler.

We have these things, called computers, that are abso-fucking-lutely awesome when dealing with numbers and table look ups and mundane repeated calculations.

Amazon has this massive cluster of computing power that they have SO MUCH SPARE they sell the extra for profit. But they don't have the software or processing power to basically due what ever dumb POS system and mechanical cash register have done for god knows how long?

I know this is going to sound amazing, but at one point in time, people calculated taxes .... IN THEIR HEAD ...

Yes there is a lot of volume, but guess what, thats what Amazon is ALL about, doing business in volume.

If every other business in the world is capable of dealing with these issues it seems a little odd that Amazon can't, considering who they are and what they do, its mind boggling that anyone could argue 'its hard', which is really all this is.

Re:Unfair?

[BitZtream]

But Amazon won't pay those taxes.

I will, as an NC resident.

Amazon won't take the hit for any tax, ever.

You'll just have a new line below your subtotal that says 'NC State Sales Tax'. You know, just like every other transaction in NC has.

Guess what, I already AM required to do that! NC already requires me to pay sales tax on items purchased out of state via mail order.

So now the difference is simply that if Amazon wants to do business in NC, then it is responsible for collecting those taxes and paying them to the appropriate office.

The price doesn't change at all. To anyone, just who is responsible for dealing with it.

So lets see, do I want my state trying to deal with tax submissions from all of its residents in 18 different ways, enforcing those collections and all the other management that goes with it. No, I'd be much fucking happer to have the storefront do it. Just like every other person who sells in NC does.

So you think Amazon has the 'right' to sell in North Carolina, but none of the 'responsibilities'?

I'm not aware of any clear minded sane person who would ever, for even an instant, think that any 'right' comes with 0 'responsibility'. There are people that think that way, we call them spoiled brats here.