I’m more than a little underwhelmed by the response to the clear intent — several weeks old now — on the part of the state of North Carolina to manufacture an excuse to tax Amazon.com sales in the state.
Cutting through the legalese, the state holds that Amazon’s affiliate linking program constitutes a nexus under which the state may require Amazon to levy tax on all its sales in the state. Amazon quite sanely has said, well, if that is the case, we’ll just blow up all affiliates in the state rather than start paying tax on transactions which cost the state nothing in terms of services provided to secure, the traditional test of any transaction tax.
With that move we are starting to hear from some of the NC folks who are losing their Amazon affiliate commissions, but precious little from the supposed social media mavens and iFutzers who are oh-so cutting edge and hip. A clear to call to action, then.
Attention hipsters, Facebookers, and Twitter-ers — Your elected officials in Raleigh have just declared war on the 21st century. What are you going to do about it?
Update: There is a petition out there against what they are calling the NC Affiliate tax.
