A small sigh of relief was heard around Affiliateland when today’s hearing in California regarding Assembly Bill 178 (“AB 178″) was canceled.

In a nutshell, AB 178 is now a two-year bill which signifies its death, for this year anyway.

Unfortunately, lawmakers can use a practice known as “GANDA” (Gut-and-Amend), during the final days of a legislative session in which the entire contents of another bill can be stripped out and replaced with the contents of AB 178.

It may take a few times to finally put this issue to bed, but in the meantime it looks like California’s small business owners are temporarily safe.

Great work by the whole crew who banged on the doors of California’s legislators to get them to understand the ramifications of #advertising tax.

My post earlier this week, “California to Stomp on Small Business Owners“, has spurred a lot of online retailers and affiliate marketers to contact me to find out exactly how they’re going to be affected by the pending legislation in California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Tennessee, Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina and possibly now Florida.

While I’d love to talk to each of you individually, I’m falling way behind in getting back to you and my day job, so please consider this my personal apology.

That being said, Shawn Collins just put up a brief 2-minute video explaining the threat and implications of this unconstitutional “Advertising Tax (also known as “Amazon Tax” or “Affiliate Tax”.)

In the video, he further explains what you can do to help fight this legislation and resources available to make it easy.

So whether your an online merchant, affiliate network, advertising network, affiliate marketer, online publisher, or simply care about protecting the U.S. Constitution, it’s imperative that you take action.

When all this comes down in your state, be sure to note how your representative(s) voted and then put them out of a job at the next election if they voted against your livelihood.