Bloggers squeezed in Amazon flap
Posted : Mar 10, 2010 6:13 PM
Updated: Mar 11, 2010 6:07 AM
Local bloggers are being squeezed financially by the online super-retailer Amazon.com after state lawmakers voted to tax online sales.
Rob Lucas runs the outdoor sporting blog ultrarob.com.
He and other bloggers make money by refering their readers to Amazon and other retailers to buy products. The companies give them a portion of the sale in exchange for the referral.
Late Sunday night, Lucas and hundreds of other Colorado bloggers recieved a curt email from Amazon calling the law "burdensome" and notifying them that they were dropping all local Associates.
The email reads:
"We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states."
It goes on to encourage the frustrated bloggers to lobby the legislature to change the law.
Lucas says the bloggers are caught in the middle.
"They're using affilates as kind of a pawn in a political game to try and get this tax law repealed, even though, really affiliates don't make a difference in whether they have to pay taxes in this case."
On Monday, Governor Bill Ritter denounced the move and yesterday the liberal advocacy group Progress Now urged Coloradoans to boycott the site in response to their action.
lsilvest at Mar 10th 2010 11:33 PM
Just more evidence of the incompetents running this state. If they had done their homework they would know this tax gambit had been tried before with the same results. The bloggers ostensibly give Amazon a presence in the state. It's simple, no bloggers, no presence, no basis for state taxation.
Amazon isn't the problem for the bloggers, Ritter is. When are these incompetents in Denver going to get it through their heads that all of these extra taxes are doing nothing but hampering commerce. That will be the day when I let Ritter and these liberal jackasses tell me where to shop. I buy online because I can get things I cannot find locally. A lot of them are from small businesses that Amazon enables with their marketing power.
Mr. Koen needs to do his homework also before propogating misleading and inaccurate information.