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."
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!
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.
sPh
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.
"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?
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