NYCPHP Meetup

[sbeam]

On Wednesday 13 August 2008 20:08, Susan Shemin wrote:
> Amazon actually canceled all affiliate marketers' accounts in New York
> because of this, and filed a lawsuit against the NY Attorney General.

such is the genius of the NY legislature - business has left the state, and 
residents have one more reason to move to NJ, CT or VT (or NH, in my case :). 
By increasing tax revenue they decreased it. They are apparently hoping 49 
other states will pass similar laws, and Kaleeefoooohnya might, but the court
will strike it down anyway, their argument is nonsense - basically that 
contracting with someone in a state creates a nexus there.

I mean, IANAL, but c'mon.

SCOTUS heard in 1992 a case involving mail-order catalogs in North 
Dakota, where ND tried to argue that the presence of the catalogs 
constituted a "presence" in that state. They said that A) no it doesn't and 
B) even if it did, the obligation of every retailer to track sales tax rates 
and categories for 6000+ jurisdictions nationwide was too onerous to 
contemplate. So NY will have a hard time overturning that, especially with 
the current crop of judges.

And even if I am wrong, which is *very rare*, the affiliates can physically 
take their laptops out of states that do pass such laws. 

In any case it won't affect you unless you employ "affiliates" (however that 
is defined)

Sam