Of course, what a great way to start the day. I log onto Facebook to see an article posted by Shawn Collins about HB 1317, the Advertising Tax of Texas. This would make sense as Shawn Collins recently moved to Austin (you go, baller). Allegedly, on February 14th, the bill was referred to the Ways & Means committee. If anyone remembers the post I wrote up regarding the Maryland Affiliate Tax I went into detail regarding my view on the bill, as well as why I believe it shouldn’t be passed in any of the states. If you’re reading this from the Ways & means committee, please do take a look at that article as well – it explains a view you may not have heard yet.
What a lot of people aren’t grasping is that if this passes people will literally lose their sources of income. On the flip side, it’ll generate another source of revenue for the state – oh wait, no it won’t. If you look at the writeup by Amazon’s Paul Misener (Vice President for Global Public Policy) that he composed for the Maryland Affiliate Tax, you’ll see that the plan clearly won’t do anything but put people out of the job (in my opinion, of course). As we’ve seen in the past with New York as an example, this isn’t exactly a plan that will be executed correctly.
I highly urge you all to share this story (whether it’s my site, or any of the other writeup’s) to try to generate more eyes on this. This is a serious problem for people in this industry and if people keep taking the stance of “it’s only a problem when it hits my state” then your state won’t have a choice when every other state in the USA passes it. If this bill is allowed to pass in Texas, people who earn the majority of their incomes through Affiliate Marketing (primarily CPS (Cost Per Sale) programs) will literally be cut off overnight and thrown into a situation where they have to recover their lives. I have a feeling the politicians that look at this don’t actually believe that some people make full time incomes through Affiliate Marketing – nor do they even understand what the definition of an affiliate is. Who knows, it won’t hurt them at the end of the day, right? Just some random people who do that “online thing”.
Here are a few more sources to look into to get more information regarding this bill, as well as to get your voices heard:
It seems that a lot of affiliates are waiting for other people to take care of this sort of legislation that can literally put them on the unemployment line.
Great to see you spreading the word, and I hope lots more affiliates wake up and contact their local representatives to explain the economic impact on them.
Of course, Shawn. There -needs- to be more attention brought to this.
I have a call in to my Rep. and will follow up with a letter.
@Scott – Nice! Let us know via comments what all happens with your calls & letters. I’d love to throw it up on the post to show some feedback from the readers!