Amazon is Terminating Connecticut Affiliates Due to Online Sales Tax Law

.. > or if you are relocating to another state in the near future,

So what I get from that is Amazon saying that if you move your business out of CT, you can modify the address on your Amazon affiliate account, then continue selling.

The simple solution is to open a Deleware corp. It's easy (you can do it online) and you're approved
in something like 48 hrs. (this is not legal advice, consult an attorney, blah bah)

Walmart and Best Buy are accepting nexus refugees. They pay sales taxes in all applicable states.

Amazon terminated Illinois Affiliates in March...there's an article here.
In an effort to raise money...politicians have in effect simply done the opposite by chasing it away! Another dumb political decision...can we get someone with brains in office? Please!!!

In Hawaii, they have tried twice so far to add a tax collection law... The first time, the (then) governor vetoed it, and most recently two conflicting bills ran out of steam.

The problem here is there seems to be more exposure to the "nexus" law, which nobody wants or needs. In the Hawaii impelementation, vendors like Amazon wouldn't actually collect taxes for the state, but would provide transactional information for anything shipped to the state. Name, address, date and total amount of the sale would need to be provided. This could result in litigation regarding privacy, so no company wants to be involved at all with it. Also, the accounting systems they use just can't handle doing so without additional programming costs.

On the other hand, there is something called the simplified tax plan (which something like 26 states already use). It provides for a single, statewide tax to be collected by the vendor, and forwarded to the state. At present, I know of no vendor that has any issue with this, because their systems can easily handle the change, no additional programming costs are involved, and there isn't the spectre of someone filing suit over potential privacy issues. If you don't think there are privacy issues, think about the "brown paper wrapper delivery" places. Would YOU like your state getting a list showing a list of your purchases from one of these places? Yep, sure as rain, somebody would sue. If only (ahem) to protect the rights of the innocent.

There has long been a problem with tax collection, because many states have several levels of differing rates. In some places, taxes are added by county, city/municipality, borough or even voting district. Trying to keep up with the changes alone in a single state is huge, for the whole country, nearly insurmountable. This makes it extremely difficult for an online company to be able to accurately charge sales tax if the simplified tax rule isn't in place.

The argument here in Hawaii is that 1) we spend over 750 Million dollars a year online that is not generating sales taxes (with perhaps a million and a quarter residents, including children) and it is causing difficulties for our local merchants. Unfortunately, someobody has their head where the sun don't shine, because I really doubt we spend that much, and most of the problem with the local merchants is their attitude, not the online shops. (When a local merchant won't bother to order something without charging a 50% upcharge, plus charging for FedEx shipping, (very expensive) but bringing it in on their "next container" in 6 or 8 weeks, and generally acting like you HAVE to buy from them because they're the only vendor within 50 miles that can sell you that item.... [sigh]