Question regarding state tax nexus laws

[MariaM]

Hi, I do online affiliate marketing and live in California, which has a sales tax nexus law.  As a consequence, the affiliate provider “platform” doesn’t give me a commission for sales made to customers in California.  I am losing a lot of money.  My affiliate provider said if I only change my address in my profile, I could start collecting California commissions; I was thinking of putting down a forwarding address in Oregon (there are plenty of providers online) as a my residence (Oregon also doesn’t have a sales tax nexus law).  Is this illegal?  I intend to fully pay California sales tax on all commissions that I receive, but it’s first the question of actually getting those commissions.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

[MrPhil]

What exactly does this have to do with osCommerce?

 

In general, if you are in California, you have a nexus there, and must collect sales tax for sales shipping to California. Whether the customers think they are getting away with not paying sales tax, or not, is your business. Presumably the state will be happy if the appropriate tax is remitted, regardless of whether the customer realizes they're paying it, but I can't guarantee that. It's entirely possible that they will still prosecute for failure to collect sales tax.

 

If your "affiliate provider" won't let you sell to California because they can't be bothered to figure out the sales tax, that sounds like a bad deal for you. Doesn't CA use "origin address" (your local sales tax rate) rather than the customer's (destination) local tax rate? You could just mark up your prices a bit to cover sales tax on your portion of CA sales, and remit the proper amount, but as I said, I can't guarantee that the state will go with that.