ShareASale Aids Decision on New York Affiliate Expulsion

May 18th, 2008 · Comments

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Brian Littleton, President and CEO of ShareASale.com, announced on his forum on ABestWeb that his affiliate network will work with merchants to make decisions on how to react to the upcoming Amazon tax in New York.

As I reported last week, Overstock.com is removing all New York affiliates from their affiliate program to avoid having online purchases by New York residents subject to a sales tax.

The New York state government has decided that having affiliates in the state qualifies as a tax nexus for any company, and they will start collecting sales tax in such cases on June 1, 2008.

Anyhow, ShareASale will be providing key information to merchants to help them to determine the impact on their business from affiliates in New York state.

Regarding this law, it is important for us to provide the answer to the question that is at the crux of the law. As a merchant, the question is … “In the past year (or other time frame) what was my total gross sales generated from affiliates residing in the state of NY.”

As such, our first response to this will be to provide this report which will allow merchants to know where they stand regarding the law.

Visit http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=105428 for more information.

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Tags: Affiliate News

Viewing 9 Comments

MediaTrust 3 months ago 1 point
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Sean have we seen any other affiliate marketing solutions & service providers reach out to help affiliates or take a position or stand on the tax issue? I think its great to see Brian work to help affiliates understand the tax impact on the business. Especially after Overstock decided to "choose it customers over it affiliates"?? 3,400 affiliates who have helped build their brand are also 3,400 customers are they not. Its curious how OSTK dumped them instead of partnering with Amazon.Bad move OSTK. Who is going to trust marketing for you now.

Besides helping them understand the impact we need to also stand up as an industry and all work together not only to fight for the affiliates, but for each other as a community. I think this issue uncovers the even larger issue being that this large meaningful part of the industry is severely fragmented and has no collective voice or leadership at all. Sad times for affiliate marketing that generates a very large part of the internet marketing economy. Network, service providers, bloggers, super affiliates and affiliates of all sizes. Where are you. Where is your voice. i guess the biggest question is how much and if anyone cares about this. Or if they do how would they like to see the leaders of this industry create a bipartisan body that represents the affiliate marketing industry. We would like to help make a difference if anyone wants to voice their thoughts or ideas. ANYTHING! please reach out thru affiliatepetition@gmail.com or post a comment to http://www.relevantlyspeaking.com/2008/05/15/wa...

We would like to see our valuable affiliate marketing community come together as a collaborative collective community. The tax issue is a good place to start creating leadership.

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Shawn Collins 3 months ago 1 point
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I am not are of any affiliate programs or networks who publcly announced anything with regards to to "Amazon tax."

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MediaTrust 3 months ago 1 point
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Am i off base or is that a little odd? especially if this spreads to CA and possibly further form there.Doesn't linkshare manage the Overstock program?

Thanks for the update Shaun.

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Shawn Collins 3 months ago 1 point
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I'm not surprised at all, considering most affiliate networks are owned by parent companies and have levels of bureuacracy.

> Doesn't linkshare manage the Overstock program?

Is that meant to be rhetorical? Overstock indicates on their site that the affiliate program is with LinkShare.

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jamesdorans 3 months ago 1 point
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Right now I am loosing respect for Linkshare. Being both an Merchant with them for years and now Publisher.

Why is Amazon the only one fighting, Linkshare is a NY company hell from my office I could throw a stone at there offices.

If I buy on the internet I am going to buy through Amazon.

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Shawn Collins 3 months ago 1 point
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Have you touched base with LinkShare?

Perhaps they are looking into it and haven't made any announcements, yet?

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jamesdorans 3 months ago 1 point
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Actually, I was just saying that Amazon is the only one taking real action. I have and they said that they have no comment.

Granted they are owned by a Japaneses company and by nature they are slow. I work for a Japaneses company and experience that first hand.

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Kevin Webster 3 months ago 1 point
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I actually have a new interpretation of the New York law, which I touched on in the last post on my blog. I think there's some important distinctions in kinds of affiliates that need to be cleared up.

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MediaTrust 3 months ago 1 point
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Shawn.. thank you for catching that. ( i was over caffeinated this AM) What i was meaning to point out is that Linkshare manages the OSTK program and has not said a word regarding their stance on the topic.

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