Slashdot Mirror
Bid to Tax Satellites Rejected
Kierthos writes: "This article updates an earlier Slashdot story about the Los Angeles County Assessor's office trying to tax satellites in orbit around the Earth. Short version: no go, the satellites don't get taxed."
In this case, they're taxing infrastructure, which is perfectly admissible, if not standard practice. It's alot like collecting a toll to use a road.
However, the case in question (satellites) does not involve infrastructure to even the slightest extent. Los Angeles does not own the space in which the satellite exists; they do not own any of the property used to support the satellite; and they certainly don't own the satellite itself. It seems to me that this type of case would be fairly cut-and-dry...leave it to the wonderful LA county judicial system to let it drag out for as long as it did...
"I don't know if there's any international law/agreement on how high a country's jurisdiction extends"
As Jerry Pournelle has pointed out, there are 5 countries in the world that can put objects INTO orbit, and two who can probably knock objects down FROM orbit (US and Russia; yes, I know, we claim we don't have such a weapon). Everyone else is free to make whatever laws they want; enforcing them would be the hard part.
sPh
I disagree with the tax, but I think you are wrong about your reasons.
The space they orbit in does require expenditure to maintain. Space Command tracks all the debris in space and that costs a lot of money.
I do believe the justification they had was pure greed. They were taxing the company every which way. They tax the corporate income, they tax the people working for the corporation, they tax the property they work on, etc., etc. etc.
Clearly someone just thought why not. And the biggest reason why not is that the moment that gets put in place, the company will look at moving...hell, I'd be surprised if they haven't been looking already. California is not cheap.
Um, like you said about income tax, to "pay for lots of stuff, mainly public goods..."
"to an economist, "pure greed" is the same motivation behind every wage negotiation, every food purchase, every economic decision. Do you donate to charity? You do it because it makes you feel good, and your pure greed for that feeling makes you turn over a (usually moderate) portion of your wealth."
I was with you up to the second sentence of this paragraph. There is the minor problem that actual human beings are neither utility maximizers nor particularly rational. And even within the classical framework (a) there is no accepted way to measure "utility" so proof/falsification of these theories is essentially impossible (b) information and transactions costs are not zero, are often significant, and are usually not known or understood. With that complication much of what is "proven" in classical micro turns out not to actually apply in practice.
sPh
Unless they were doing this deliberately to force the issue in the courts to get a precedence that this will NOT be allowed.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.