Affiliates Lobby Against California AB178, While Maryland Piggybacks Similar Legislation onto Larger Bill

I was optimistic all week about fighting these misguided tax bills that make affiliates the losers in the state governments’ quest to tax Internet sales.

We had a great and amazing week in California.  Brook Schaaf, CEO SchaafCo, and Karen Garcia, Co-Owner GTOManagement, organized a lobby day in Sacramento to fight AB 178. All the feedback I got from other lobbyists in Sacramento was that the State legislature was blown away by our story and the education the affiliate lobbying team provided.  Count one for the good guys!

And I was even more pleased as I watched our local community organize politically and fight to protect our businesses as opposes to being steamrolled.

When the critical vote in Sacramento was delayed and our little super surgical strike activist team immediately started trying to figure out how to leverage the delay to put more pressure on legislators.   We were already setting up meetings with press and elected officials.
I was so excited since I truly believe we can win that vote.  California has always led the way for state legislation, and other states look at us for leadership.  I thought if we could win here, it would send a strong message to other states and we could create a model to fight these bills on the state level.

I wanted to try to help facilitate the following:

• Create strategies that works
• Draft templates of letters and documents for other states
• Develop leaders and mentors like Brook and Karen to help affiliates and OPM’s in other states.
• Generate network awareness to help – i.e. LinkShare and ShareASale have been great leveraging affiliates throughout the state to help.  They now have all those templates for networks to use in other states.  (Thanks Mark Kirschner and Brian Littleton!)
• And most importantly, help deliver a win! This will help teach this community it can make a difference working together.

The California campaign is working because we put a very, very strong strategy in place.  We developed an effective message and set of lobbying tools. We have executed very well.  I was just so excited on Friday.

But in the back of my head, I kept thinking affiliate tax bills are moving so fast, we might be a little late, but we only have so many resources. Then, my optimistic mood came crashing down when I got this email at 5:00 that day:

“Introduced without warning only days ago, Maryland’s version of the “Affiliates Tax Nexus” legislation likely will be enacted late Monday or early Tuesday, without any hearing in the House. The legislature is set to adjourn within a week and plans to adopt a broad revenue/spending bill Monday/Tuesday.

The affiliates tax nexus is part of this big bill, which almost certainly will get an up/down vote, and the governor does not have a line item veto. The Maryland Senate is unlikely to change course, so it’s crucially important to contact the Speaker of the House over the weekend. Unfortunately, affiliates in Maryland have had almost no opportunity to learn of this proposal and react, so they need to engage within hours, not days.” -AffiliateTip

As the case of Maryland illustrates, the problem is we have no time, now.  I have no doubt other states that we are unaware of,  are working on this tax and we don’t even know which states are working on it because we have no one monitoring it.

Our greatest strength is our ability to organize and create pressure on elected officials. We have such wonderful stories to tell. And each network has an amazing database where it can identify affiliates in key districts and then help them participate in the political process.

Think what would have happened if all the affiliate networks were working in tandem to fight these bills and they all blasted out emails to their affiliates in Maryland on Saturday asking them to call and write their state Legislature over the weekend.  My guess is that the bill would not pass on Monday or would at least be slowed down enough to give us a fighting chance.

We need the PMA, all of the affiliate networks, ABestWeb, grassroots efforts such as – Fight Against the AdvertisingTax and Affiliate Voice -  to come together now, not in 6 weeks.  All these stakeholders have the grassroots databases that can match affiliates up by state and assembly districts to blast out action alerts to affiliates.  And we can get feelers out in every state to see if an advertising tax bill is coming down the pike.
I know people are working on coming together, but the issue is that we have no time now to have all of our differences and politics to fall aside over time. We need action now!

Mature industries understand that you fight it out in the marketplace and work together in a political arena.  Five or six of us are making a huge difference in California.  It’s time the industry comes together to stop these bills.  What we have done in California can be reproduced easily.  We just need leadership and to put our differences aside.

And if you think your segment of affiliate marketing can win this alone, then stop and think about the pressure the states feel to raise revenue due to the economy and the very focused pressure of the booksellers lobby which initiated the legislation in California and several other states.
Political campaigns are won and lost based on how well a coalition works together.

I always think a symphony orchestra is a good analogy.  The lobbyists are the flutes, the media mavens are the violins and all the instruments are the grassroots.  If all the musicians are on a different page of music, the symphony sounds awful, but when everyone is playing in concert that is when everything works.

Let’s just remember what the great Mahatma Gandhi said of India’s fight for independence: United we stand, divided we fall.  Or what a good friend and industry leader said to me this morning via IM “Whatever, this is stupid, people just need to work together.”