WebProWorld
North Carolina residents who are Amazon Affiliates recently received an email telling them the company would be ending its relationships with them due to the North Carolina state legislature getting ready to, as Amazon puts it, "enact an unconstitutional tax collection scheme."
What the North Carolina government is proposing would apply sales tax to purchases made through online affiliates based in NC. It has not yet passed.
It appears that North Carolina is about to follow New York’s lead and implement a tax collection scheme that will see Amazon.com shut down its Associates affiliate program in the state. Today, all Amazon Associates in NC received this gloomy email from the online retailer:
Craigslist can’t win for losing, especially when it comes to grandstanding attorneys general who understand the value of a high profile crusade more than they do the law. The latest example comes out of South Carolina, where the attorney general has threatened criminal prosecution of craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark for displaying prostitution ads and “graphic pornographic material.”
The North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law (NCICL) has called the $165 million in tax incentives for Google “unusual” and challenged the deal in court.
We’ve brought you several stories about Google’s plan to build server farms in North Carolina; the company is now preparing to build more of the same in that state’s southern neighbor. But South Carolina must have something up its sleeve, as it seems to have gotten a better deal.
North Carolina’s Caldwell County ponied up $250 million in tax breaks to Google to entice it to build a data center there but didn’t study whether the deal made good financial sense.
