Sales Tax Legislation

By Annie on Mar 16, 2010 | Add a Comment

Yesterday three indepdendent booksellers from Connecticut made a difference in the E-Fairness issue. With the help of Dan Cullen and David Grogan from ABA,  Suzy Staubach from UCONN, Kathryn Fabiani of RJ Julia's and myself presented testimony in favor of the ad tax bill RB 5481to the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.  Only one affiliate (freeshipping.com) testified against the bill yesterday and this has people worried. AOL was said to be there and no one from Amazon or any other affiliates appeared that we knew.   The Performance Marketing Association wrote in their blog (www.performancemarketingassociation.com/blog/) today that the bill will probably be passed as there were THREE retailers testifying in favor of this bill.  The two hours prior to our testimony were actually rather slow and boring listening to public officials discuss how the State of Connecticut is so broke which actually probably helped our cause by showing the State Senators where they can find some additional income from internet sales tax collection.  This morning on Twitter (yes, I was there) I found an article in a the Ct Mirror about the hearing  www.ctmirror.org/story/5168/amazon-threatens-fire-state-affiliates-if-connecticut-tries-collect-sales-tax that is pretty interesting.  All this press will help our case to level the playing field and help independent bookstores.  And I felt pretty good after my three minute testimony when I saw a big thumbs up from Senator Meyer!