[Rhea]

What is the American Booksellers Association and why are they lobbying for an affiliate sales tax nexus? The claim unfair competition from online booksellers.

http://bookweb.org/advocacy/salestax/efairness.html

The relative newness of the Internet as a shopping medium and the rise of affiliate marketing has in some ways clouded the issue. Many online retailers will point to a 1992 Supreme Court judgment, Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, to justify why they are not collecting sales tax in states where they have affiliates. The Quill decisiondoes underscore the need for "nexus" -- that without nexus it would be too burdensome for a company to collect sales tax in every state due to the complexity of various state and local sales tax systems. However, Quill -- which was written before the advent of online affiliates -- does not change the meaning of nexus. A company has nexus in a state through a retail store, warehouse, office, or sales agent. Though the definition of nexus varies slightly from state to state, on balance, ABA believes an affiliate in a state constitutes nexus since the affiliate clearly acts as an office and/or sales agent for the company.

Read the entire thing. There's a lot more information.

[meadowmufn]

Argh. I am NOT a sales agent. I am a traffic procurement engineer, dammit!

[meadowmufn]

I skimmed most of that page linked above and I have more comments.

Of COURSE there's an inherent "unfairness" of online vs B&M, but it doesn't come from affiliates. Online merchants would have an advantage whether they had affiliates or not because an online merchant can be found by and sell to a global audience, should they want to. Who's gonna hear about, let alone fly across the country for, a local B&M? If B&Ms want to compete nationally or globally, they need to compete on the same field, not penalize online merchants for playing on a completely different field.

B&Ms have their advantages over online merchants as well. You can't inspect online merchandise personally unless you buy it first. B&Ms need to use that to their advantage.

[JCSupSvc]

Rhea - The American Booksellers Association is a trade group for book stores. They will always put B&M stores ahead of internet booksellers.

meadowmufn - "traffic procurement engineer", I like that. Maybe I'll start putting that down as my occupation. Sounds so much better that internet publisher.

John

[Rhea]

I know what the ABA is, John.

I posted the link for those people who are unfamiliar with this organization and its lobbying efforts on behalf of what they term e-fairness.

[JCSupSvc]

Sorry. Since you started out "What is the..." I thought you were asking. My mistake.

[Rhea]

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I wanted people who read the opening line to ask themselves that question and then read the article.

[loxly]

IMO they won't stop until they force (attempt to) online merchants to stop selling books. Their stance is preposterous and it is aimed at doing whatever they can to stop people from shopping for books online. They are using the carrot of increased sales tax income to coerce states into passing laws that the AMA members are the only beneficiaries of.