If you offer an affiliate program for websites to sell your products, you might want to become aware of a plan afoot by the State of New York to tax you.
If you sold $10,000 worth of products to those in the state of New York and had one Web affiliate in New York, under the proposed plan you’d be required to collect and remit sales tax to local taxing authorities in the state.
That could add a significant bureaucratic burden.
The biggest threat is the slippery slope …. that it wouldn’t stop at New York. What if all 50 states decided to do something similar? There are 7,500 taxing authorities in the United States (when you consider municipalities and other local units).
I wrote about this topic over at the American Express OPEN Forum site. Dawn Rivers Baker of the MicroEnterprise Journal weighed in with her opinion on the topic, too. Read:
New York Wants to Lay A Tax Burden on Out-of-State Small Businesses.
PS, if you find the article informative and useful, click the little button over at the OPEN Forum site and say so!
I am surprised. I always thought New York was very friendly to small business.
I am glad Texas still doesn’t recognize the power of the internet. *smirk*
Is it time for another “tea party”, but this time in the “big apple”? 😉
What an extra load that will be for small businesses. I think it is driving taxing authorities crazy that they cannot control what happens on the web. It is only a matter of time that they find ways to track us and tax us on everything we do, especially on Ebay.
Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. I will be writing about some other looming taxation issues … very soon.
The taxing authorities are getting super aggressive. It all sounds great if you’re a public official (“look how much more in tax revenue we brought in”). It sounds great alright … as long as you don’t consider the ripple effects and start thinking about the long-term consequences of driving companies out of business.