If you are involved in affiliate programs and generate marketing and/or advertising revenue online from your blog, or other type of website, you may soon be in for a very rude, unpleasant surprize.  Especially with the current economic situation, state governments could be looking to increase revenue any way possible, and I”m sure that there will be increased instances of state legislatures trying to pry more and more of your hard earned money from your wallet and from your families.

What exactly is the Advertising Tax?  Well, a very short, basic explanation of it is that some people, governments, state legislatures, etc are trying to use the existance of an affiliate program as basis for the establishment of “Nexus” of a company in that state.  Once Nexus is established and has been determined, states can then use that to force those companies to collect sales tax for that state, at a minimum.  It opens up quite a can of worms, and sales tax could just be the beginning, as they could impose other legislation and control on those companies, and make business prohibitively expensive and an accounting nightmare at minimum.   Instead of dealing with this, retailers will just drop affiliates who reside in the offending states, further eliminating jobs and income when it’s difficult enough as it is.

One thing you can do is to visit this page at the Performance Marketing Alliance and let them know about yourself and how it would affect you.  They can then pass this information on to legislators in your state, and let them know that you don’t approve of it,  and the harm it would cause your business and your families.   http://performancemarketingassociation.com/advocateform.html

Better to take a proactive stance to this instead of just waiting for that e-mail that lets you know you’ve been dropped from the affiliate programs that are putting food on your table.  I’ve been through this once before, in 2006 with the online casino industry, with all of my eggs in one basket with that, and within a months time being dropped from every revenue source I had.  Not a fun spot to be in… 

Contact your legislators, representatives, congressmen, whoever, and let them know your stance on this…