Buffalo Rising Online

Very odd timing on this story.

The Buffalo News story seems far more compelling - how NY State law is driving business out of WNY.

^^ Exactly! Keep increasing taxes to pay for the ever increasing spending of the State.

Timing FAIL. So, we get to keep a store while the company pulls up stakes and heads to California? Sweet.

From the Buffalo News article listed above.

The company already was considering a move, because Brannigan said Valore couldn’t find experienced IT programmers and executives here.

Valore moved its entire online division and five employees to San Diego in July.

al-alo, it's to do with a particular kind of tax law that NYS has and Cali doesn't. The Buffalo News article refers to it.

'“We were thinking about moving as it was. But the tax law was the tipping point, and we said, ‘We’ve got to move right now,’ ” said Bobby Brannigan, president and founder of Valore Books. “Buffalo’s a good place,” he said. “I love the people there. But from a business standpoint, it’s a move that needed to be done.”

This has severely hurt the affiliates that made money through sales commissions from the retailers. And it prompted Valore to move out of state after some of the textbook distributors that listed on the company’s Web site feared they’d have to start collecting the sales tax. ...'

if you can't see right through this you're blind.

send a feel good press release to BR in anticipation of the Buffalo News story in order to further bolster the fight amongst people who would otherwise have no sense of involvement with the situation.

Doesnt seem logical to me to pack up shop and move to the complete opposite side of the country unless that was a long time desire and the new tax law simply provided the perfect opportunity to go without looking like another biz that bailed.

What really gets me is the line in the news article that states that textbooks are tax exempt in NYS. If this is the case, then please explain why this is even an issue? They obviously never had any intentions of staying, so good riddance.

Truth be told, while shopping for books last year I tried their site because I wanted to support local biz but their books were 2 to 3 times the cost of what I could easily find on Amazon.

And, um, how exactly is selling used textbooks innovative? marketing ploys are nice but hardly warrant innovation.

al-alo - If you want to say that this company is lying about losing business partners due to the NYS law and getting them back the instant they moved away from NYS, then you're free to believe that and make that claim on the web. Free country.

But again from the BN article to which hoss's first comment links:

'...The company’s Web site, www.valorebooks.com , acts as an online clearinghouse for the sale and purchase of hundreds of thousands of college textbooks each year. This spring, officials from several of the largest distributors that sell books through Valore’s Web site told Valore they believed they would have to collect sales tax on transactions involving New Yorkers.

“As soon as we moved, they relisted with us,” he said. ...'

Why is that so impossible for you to believe? What would be their motive for lying at this point? And are you also saying the tax attorney quoted later in the BN article about how this is happening to other "web affiliate" types of businesses in NYS is lying? These are rhetorical questions - you don't owe me answers, but your point of view here just seems pointlessly hostile toward this business owner (and the other business owners with a similar problem).

al - If you read the Bflo News article again, every sentence, you'll get it. Valore's business involves affiliating with other retailers who aren't in NYS. What they (and some other NYS companies) is (are) saying is those affiliates stopped doing business with them after NY earlier this year started trying to force those companies to collect NYS sales tax if they have any NYS-based affiliates. Without those affiliate relations, a big part of Valore's business stops.

I shouldn't keep quoting, but just once more:

The state, in an attempt to collect millions of dollars more in sales tax, this year passed a law that forced many large Web retailers to collect the tax on sales to buyers in the state. The “Amazon tax” affected out-of-state retailers that worked through small companies or nonprofits based in New York.

“I think New York’s approach is pretty aggressive,” said Martha L. Salzman, who teaches business law at the University at Buffalo School of Management. Affiliates typically post on their Web sites ads or descriptions for products sold by an out-of-state retailer. They receive a commission when someone clicks on the link to the retailer’s site and ends up buying the advertised item. '

As soon as they moved away from NYS, the other companies started doing business with them again. California evidently doesn't have that kind of "pretty aggressive" taxation approach as Ms. Salzman characterized it.

Now you might say you personally favor what NYS is doing more agggressively. A majority of NYS legislators favored it when they voted for it - assuming they read and understood what they voted on. What I criticized was your verdict that this entrepreneur is lying about his reason for moving his co and jobs. Too typical guilty-til-proven-innocent outlook around here toward businesses. This guy's thanks for publicly pointing out a factor driving out a business and jobs from NY was to be called a liar on a blog (al-alo 13:57 '...preliminary verdict of bullsh1t'). Great.

We'll never know if he'd have moved his co from Buffalo eventually anyway for other reasons. He said in the article this tax issue was the immediate reason. Who knows how many other IT jobs this might cause to not be located in NYS that we'll never hear about - quietly moved or just located elsewhere. And this law is hardly the only case of NYS being "pretty aggressive" about things that add to business costs. If it wasn't for the coincidence of posting something about the Bucks4Books, this wouldn't be the kind of topic BuffaloRising probably would have written about. Too negative.

buffalo rising has egg on its face

al-alo is right about Calif. also being a high tax state. The only exception is the property tax. If you paid $100,000 for a house, your annual tax would be $1000. And that would be it as there are NO school taxes at all on your property. Zilch, nada, bupkis. But, it is the reason why NYS are so far better than Calif. schools.

JSmith - No, that sentence you quoted is an interesting irony but it overlooks that out-of-state companies who stopped doing business with Valore also sell things online in addition to textbooks. That's part of what motivates web retailers to affiliate with each other - varying product offerings.

While there's no sales tax on textbooks which is what Valore sells, what the aggressive NYS tax law is trying to do is to have those companies affiliated with Valore (or with any NY-based company) be legally forced to collect NYS sales tax on any products they sell to NYS residents as a consequence of being affiliated with any NYS-based co. That's how I read it.

Who can blame out-of-state co's for deciding it's not worth the hassles and costs to deal with this? Why should anyone jump through extra hoops for the honor of doing business with a NYS-based co?

So they evidently just drop the (now formerly) NYS businesses like Valore. Loss of those cooperative relationships ruins Valore's online business model if they stay here. The fact remains (if Valore is to be believed, and nobody's yet said why they'd make up a big lie about this) that those companies stopped affiliating with Valore when NYS started this aggressive tax action earlier this year, and then they started again as soon as Valore moved out of NYS. Coincidence?