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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.'"
No, you have it all wrong. As a North Carolina citizen I can educate you ...
We have the solution. We give large internet companies (Google) tax breaks to do business here and provide jobs. And in order to encourage other businesses to move into North Carolina, we tax them on all their sales made to North Carolina, regardless of where they are located.
As you can see this is a truely brillient plan. Every well managed business would want to move to North Carolina since you can get the tax break and not have to pay. Since no other state has allowed such a brillient idea, the companies operating in NC don't have to worry about taxes from other states, but all the operations in other states are liable to NC.
Okay okay, so this is one of those moments that makes me understand why surrounding states tend to refer to people here as 'ignorant pig farmers'. I would like to point out that pig farmers aren't that stupid and this sort of thing could only be accomplished by the supreme intelligence of politicians.
If you've been watching the news recently and noticed, we have some down right AWESOME politicians.
Bear with us, the trendy 'I HATE BUSH' crowd thought it out long and hard and proudly elected an even more inept and mentally deficient batch of politicians than that last time around. Unfortunately we have too many universities and people who vote based on some ideological theory rather than reality.
Okay, fine, don't bear with us. Just please don't hold it against me personally, I'm leaving as fast as I can!
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Gas taxes and vehicle registration fees don't come close to paying for roads. Many areas use some form of sales tax to pay for part of their transportation infrastructure. So the shipping companies do not in fact pay for all of Amazon's use.
Amazon does make use of police services, schools, etc. because Amazon needs civilation to survive. That's the point. We can't separate one body's responsibility from another. We all depend on it all.
It's kind of neat to see large companies that are actually able to tell a state to !@#$% off in a good way.
Right now we have a government that is running our nation's economy into the ground. And their solution is to raise taxes and essentially kill those business that are actually doing well. Those that are managing but not doing great will die under such programs. This will further tank the economy, than those were doing well will start to struggle. Revenues to the government tax coffers will go down. So they will in turn raise more taxes and further kill the economy.
Come on, everyone in Congress should have to play SimCity.