• Pinboard Links

    Flap’s Links and Comments for April 25th on 15:13

    These are my links for April 25th from 15:13 to 15:45:

    • President 2012: Karl Rove warns candidates about late start – For a long time, it's been the cool-candidate thing to take your time coming to a 2012 decision.

      Casualness may soon be a casualty, Karl Rove said today on Fox.

      "There gets to be a point at which you don't have enough time to raise the money you need, and you don't have enough time to get organized as deeply as you need to be organized for these contests.

      That period is probably sometime in June or July."

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      No later than Memorial Day.

      BTW Ron Paul is announcing tomorrow in Iowa.

    • Online Sales Tax a Bad Deal for California – In California there are 25,000 thriving small businesses known as “affiliate marketers” and right now the very existence of this industry is being threatened by misguided legislation; in these economic times can California afford to lose 25,000 more businesses?

      The supposition of AB 153 (Skinner) and SB 234 (Hancock) is that by implementing an “affiliate nexus” tax, California will collect additional sales tax revenue.  That is simply not true.

      What is true is that if these bills pass, California affiliate marketers will have their incomes devastated, and the state will collect no new sales tax dollars.

      Affiliate marketers are California companies that earn income from ads placed on their websites. In 2009, California affiliate marketers earned $1.6 billion and paid $124 million in state income taxes (plus business taxes, employment taxes, etc).  Legislation such as AB 153 and SB 234 guarantees elimination of these fiscal contributions.

      Proponents allege that because out-of-state retailers place ads on California-owned websites they should collect sales tax. But placing an ad on a website does not constitute a “nexus,” nor does it obligate out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax in California.

      This holds true for California retailers that advertise in other states – they are not obligated to collect sales tax in states simply because they advertise there.

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      Read it all.

      And, it is a very bad idea.