A user posted some interesting articles to the CFWebstore yahoogroup today regarding gift certificates and gift cards. Many states apparently are adding legislation preventing short expirations and even requiring stores to turn over funds from expired cards to the state. Original Article. So you may want to check into what your state is doing if you sell gift certificates on your store and tend to use fairly short expirations (less than 4 or 5 years).


It does bear mentioning as well that it can be a challenge to keep on top of such laws when running an online store. Tax laws, shipping laws, etc. all continue to become more complicated and often changes are made that merchants may not even be aware of. Even when you specifically go looking for information, often it's hard to find someone that can really know for sure, even when going straight to the experts. I constantly got conflicting information from the tax department in my own state about whether electronic software was taxable until finally a tax bulletin was issued clarifying that it was indeed to be charged. Unfortunately this necessitated my redoing my business license due to incorrect information I had received previously and to this day it continues to cause me problems, with the old license number constantly coming back to haunt me when trying to do online tax returns and other transactions.


For more information on the current requirements states have regarding gift cards and gift certificates, visit the Consumers Union.