Performance Marketing Alliance Fights the Advertising Tax

Online retailers are required to charge sales taxes in every state where they have a brick and mortar presence. If Radio Shack has a store in your state (and they probably do) then they have to charge sales tax for customers living in your state.

Ecommerce companies with no brick and mortar presence at all, such as Amazon.com, don’t have to charge sales tax. This can be a marketing benefit for them, and increasing reliance by shoppers on such merchants can affect the revenue of states that rely on sales tax. States seeking some way toThese bills tend to get popular names like “Internet Tax’ or “Amazon Tax,” but these names are misleading. Here’s why: in many cases, the bills focus on affiliate marketers only.

That is, you can still shop with Amazon.com without paying sales tax. Shop through an Amazon affiliate who lives in your state, though, and you’ll have to pay those taxes.

It isn’t only big companies and their affiliates who are affected by these laws. Affiliate marketing is a growing trend. Companies with new software or publications may set up affiliate marketing programs with resellers, small companies may use affiliate marketing to help grow their businesses, and nonprofits use affiliate marketing to support their informational websites – in all, at least 200,000 Americans are engaged in some aspect of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketers can join with the Performance Marketing Alliance to fight against these advertising taxes by filling out a simple form.