Black Hills Advertising Federation Alert on South Dakota Advertising Tax Proposal

I wish it weren’t so, but it’s true. Five state representatives and two state senators have introduced House Bill 1266, which would levy a special tax on advertising-related services. Here’s the text summary of the bill, which was first read on the House floor on February 3. The proposed law would:

• “impose a tax on the gross receipts of advertising services, to create the education advertising gross receipts tax fund, and to deposit the advertising gross receipts tax revenue in the education advertising gross receipts tax fund.”

If you’re getting this email, we probably don’t have to explain how this could adversely affect all of us. But just in case: as a matter of principle, the American Advertising Federation rejects all government efforts to arbitrarily tax our livelihood.

To that end, the good gentlemen at StraightForward Media have set up an anti-1266 website that we hope you’ll visit in order to share your discontent. It’s at http://www.no1266.com/

Here you can find the contact information for all of the sponsors of the bill, and we hope you’ll use that contact information to register your displeasure. Also, it’s very important that you contact your local reps in the legislature and urge them to vote no.

Thanks very much for your attention to this issue. It affects all of us, and we need to band together to defeat it!

Jamee Allgier
Executive Director
Black Hills Advertising Federation
www.bhaf.org