As many people remember, especially those that use to be Amazon affiliate marketers, last year Colorado passed a tax that in essence stated that is a company had affiliate marketers in Colorado, it had nexus to Colorado and had to collect sales tax on behalf of Colorado. While we were not the only ones to do so (Ohio and Rhode Island have similar provisions), we did suffer the consequences. Within a day of passage, Amazon pulled all its contracts with affiliate marketers and the state failed to collect any additional taxes but did lose the taxes that those affiliate marketers paid.

However, in recent news, Illinois is now looking to pass similar legislation. While obviously they won’t be the first to do so, because of the size of the state it may have a greater impact than the law did in someplace like Rhode Island or even Colorado. We will have to wait and see if this is the beginning of a landslide to try to tax online sales throughout the county.

In other news, the Associated Press has an article that Washington D.C. is suing sites such as Expedia and Orbitz for not remitting enough in hotel taxes for hotel rooms purchased online. This appears to have more weight to it than the online sales of goods as both Expedia and Orbitz appear to be accepting the tax from the Enduser but not paying it to the state. Again, this is something to watch to see what happens!