Now that Amazon has reached a deal on the California Affiliate Tax in which the State of California will wait another year to enforce their affiliate tax scheme, Amazon has decided to re-invite their affiliates in California to join them.
Amazon had dumped all their affiliates, arguing that having any CA affiliates would hurt Amazon’s revenue by forcing them to charge tax to California residents. In response to the proposed plan, Amazon had started a referendum to change the law, but as part of the deal with California has stopped this push
Many people have criticized Amazon’s deal as being a way to curry favor with the State of California while abandoning the fight for affiliates. However, in a comment to a recently post about California Affiliate Tax, Performance Marketing Association director Rebecca Maddigan wrote that “Amazon has been the only e-tailer putting their money and efforts behind fighting the affiliate nexus tax around the country, and only Overstock has ever made any public opposition comments. I’ve been hearing rumblings from other e-tailers that they are mad at Amazon over this deal. Well where the heck where those e-tailers in this fight? Nowhere. Not a peep. We couldn’t get them to sign a single petition – not one e-tailer! They let the largest e-tailer in the world fight their battles. Shame on the other e-tailers for not engaging in their own destinies.”
Whatever the purpose of this deal is, one has to ask how many affiliates will re-sign up to the Amazon Associates program, when they know there is a possibility in a year they will again be abandoned. It almost seems like a weird abusive relationship on the part of Amazon, where they abandon affiliates, save their own ass, blame California for being mean and then apologize and say that they didn’t mean it.
Here is a copy of the Letter:
As you may have heard, California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation repealing the law that had forced us to terminate our California Associates. We are pleased to invite all California Associates whose accounts were closed due to the prior legislation to re-enroll in the Associates Program.
If you haven’t already re-enrolled, please click here:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/reinstatement/main.html
When asked to sign in, please use the same email address and password that were previously associated with your Associates account. To make your return to the Program as seamless as possible, when you re-enroll, your account settings (login, Associates ID, payment information, etc.) will be the same as they were previously. Traffic you referred while your account was closed won’t be eligible for advertising fees.
For further information about re-enrollment, please click here:
