NY Sales Tax & Affiliates

Arbitrage Opportunity?

[gopi]

The coming NY Sales Tax proposal may soon result in merchants not accepting affiliates from the state of New York.

Is there is a Arbitrage Opportunity here?...Why not some one (outside NY) start a middleman network, aggregate traffic from NY affilates (via sub-ids), collect the merchant commission & distribute it back (after taking their cut)...Hmm, am i missing something?

[purplecape]

Yes.

[jcoronella]

Hmm... You may want to check with your accountant and lawyer on that.

Reading through the letter from NYC, it seems you could get a way with converting CPA to CPC, however. Shifts the risk tho.

[gopi]

Good point John, CPA to CPC would not be risky if structured right - make the CPC dynamic/varying for each affiliate, call it as SmartPrice or something :)

IMO, this is easy money for some good bizdev type living near NYC, they dont even have to make a deal with all NY affiliates, just the top 10 would be enough!.

[farmboy]

...aggregate traffic from NY affilates (via sub-ids), collect the merchant commission & distribute it back (after taking their cut)...Hmm, am i missing something?

Sounds like you would become the defacto merchant and thus owe the tax to the state of New York.

FarmBoy

[Catalyst]

Does not make sense to me and I see lots of problems with the idea.

FYI wanted to be sure affiliates interested in all the news about the NY tax law
knows about the NY tax thread going over in the eCommerce forum.

Filled with lots of info including the latest development:
Overstock who dropped 3,400 affiliates JUST sued the
state of New York - took it to the supreme court. Info on page 5.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: Catalyst at 8:20 pm (utc) on June 1, 2008]