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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."
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Dude, IIRC LA was planning on taxing the co that owns the satellites who're based inside their jurisdiction. The basis for this was that the satellites constituted "moveable property" of the company (usually applied to calculate tax based on company assets like trucks etc.). If the company had moved out of the jurisdiction area then LA wouldn't have had any grounds for this in the first place, though thankfully it seems that the common-sense solution has been arrived at.
At the risk of finding that my memory is flawed (and looking very stupid), I've gotta say; read the original story.
These are the levies of the tax office Los Angelas, it's five year mission to seek out and tax new revenue sources, to boldly tax where no-one has taxed before!
I thought the courts would allow tax on space, considering Microsoft isn't a monopoly.
Hell - not only would the laws of physics fuck up in a black hole, the laws of tax would two.
Reminds me of the court battle cities actually did win, that would allow them to tax any communications traffic going through cables laid within their jurisdictions. They were actually thinking about taxing per-square foot, as a way to come up with a "sensible" tax assessment, knowing full well they had no idea the value of the commerce flowing in the fiber, and copper.
Killing the Golder Goose, for sure.
Maybe they will try to tax Australian residents for using the area beneath LA County, or even the satellites who use the space beneath them for that matter.
Hehe I'd like to see LA PROVE that a satellite passed over head. They can't even catch half the people who run through the EZ Pass lanes in NJ!
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
OK, I know governments can tax whatever they want, whenever they want. But there's usually a reason. For example, property taxes pay for local amenities and police. Vehicle taxes pay for the upkeep of roads and traffic signals, and the building of new ones. Direct taxes such as income tax and corporation tax pay for lots of stuff, mainly public goods such as defence, civil servants' wages, etc.
The other main use of taxation is as a disincentive to some activity or other (such as smoking and drinking, or in the case of fuel taxation, driving).
Why tax satellites? The space they orbit in requires no expenditure to maintain, and there's no reason to try putting people off launching satellites, because it costs many millions of pounds/dollars.
Apart from pure greed, what's the justrification behind such a proposal?
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The sun never passes directly over the United States, unless you start taking into account our assorted territories, and even then it'd only be a twice-a-year thing.
There are/(were?) a number of space related tax reform bills currently before congress, i.e.
1) Invest in space now (of 2001)
2) Spaceport equality act (of 2001)
3) Zero gravity, zero tax act (of 2001)
4) Space tourism promotion act (of 2001)
5) The commercial spacepartnership act (inactive)
Read all about it here
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
"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.
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I don't think they were trying to tax the satellites just because they were occassionally overhead. I believe they were trying to tax the owner of the satellites as a corporation based in L.A. that owned property, regardless of where the property was located.
Now, I don't know where Hughes corporate office is located. If it isn't located in L.A., then the tax assessor had no basis at all to attempt taxation. Their home page has a contact PO box in El Segundo, CA 90245-0956, but it doesn't say if they have even a branch there.
Don't get me wrong. I am glad the tax was shot down. Satellites cost enough already without adding taxes. Got too many taxes already.
There's a UN charta that both the US and Russia signed that states that no county can claim sovereignty of celestial bodies. Property rights are a different matter, however, and no one can really stop you from claiming ownership of a celestial body, but I think you actually have to go there! "But it passed overhead!" probably wouldn't cut it. Now if it was permanently overhead, you may have some claim but I doubt it. For an example of a company planning to claim an asteroid see Space Dev.
I was worried I'd have to start paying taxes on all my sats, you know how it is, first you buy a car, then a house, then a multi-million dollar satellite, and the government wants to stick it's grubby hands in your pockets every chance they get. Isn't it bad enough already that I'm paying social security and I could get 10 times the return by putting that money in a 2% savings account instead?
Seriously, I think the federal government should be able to tax these sats because NASA and others are very important in the regulation of space and the coordination of all the objects out there (so these satellites don't go crashing into the international space center.) It should be just enough to pay for the work the federal govt. does, but it's ridiculous for some county to say "hey, we want some money, gimmie some money" just because they can. They have nothing to do with space travel so they should keep their grubby hands out of it.
~ now you know
"no go, the satellites don't get taxed"
...but they do get their own DVD zone. Can't have astronauts "pirating" DVDs (would that make them Space Pirates?).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Course here in NC we're going to start paying Sales Tax on DISH/DirectTV - not the same but I guess its fair since cable customer pay the same thing.
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The fall out from this type of ruling is going to be felt quite heavily in coming years.
/. I think, but if you think about it - would you rather be charged an extra couple of percent for your bandwidth or have propoerty taxes rise AGAIN!??
We are currently taxed for driving, flying, building a home, playing with toys, eating anything non-essential and much more. Data is harder to tax, and so for the greater part we are NOT taxed for exchanging data.
Governments tax for two reasons. 1: To pay for the 'stuff' of governing and providing public facilities to the country 2: As a penalty for anti social / environmental behaviours.
As a greater proportion of our wealth is spent 'virtually' a greater portion of our 'real' expenditure will have to be taxed to ensure the books balance.
Personally, I'd rather see fair taxes. Rich people exchange data (in the main) more than poor people. So tax us. Unpopular on
Taken from a msgeek article:
:P NASA is technically in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act!
"Call the MPAA thought police!
According to this site, NASA paid a region-hacking company in the UK for two hacked Sony FX-1 DVD players. This is technically illegal under the terms of the DMCA, as it thwarts a content-restriction scheme.
It could be argued that the ISS is an international zone beyond the reach of US law and therefore DMCA doesn't apply. But NASA is a United States government agency and is bound by the DMCA.
I look forward to what may happen if the MPAA decides to play hardball with NASA. This sounds like a terrific case to test the (un)constitutionality of the DMCA...bwahahaha!!! "
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
You just have to remember that most of the hot air comes out of the mouth, for testing purposes.
I can somehow imagine what it would look like in a testing center.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Your memory is correct. Florida tried to pull the same stunt with IBM, attempting to tax them on their global revenue because they had a plant in Florida. That brilliant initiative went away pretty quickly when IBM threatened to completely pull out of Florida and shut down their Boca Raton plant, putting all those citizens of Florida out of work. IBM did eventually close Boca a few years back. Kind of a bummer really, it was the birthplace of the PC and a beautiful site as well.
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Looge, do you have any friends? Any at all?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.