California Lawmaker Proposes Music Download Tax

modemac writes "Sacramento, California Assemblyman Charles Calderon wants to expand a 75-year-old sales tax on 'tangible personal property' to include music downloads from iTunes and other music-download sites. The tax would specifically apply to music downloads, but the estimate used in this article for revenue generated by 'Net downloading also "includes pornography downloads." The measure, AB 1956, will be considered on Monday, April 14th."

Comments

Re:Will only encourage "illegal" downloading

[Sandbags]

Let me quote you a few things from our constitution:

Section 8 Clause 1: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

10th Ammendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

It has been rules that "the Congress" is both inclusive of the Congress of the USA as well as individually those of the states. This is further backed up by the statement that "Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States" where it also in the constitution specifically denies the states from passing imposts, excises, and duties.

The idea is that states may pass taxes basically as they see fit. For virtually any reason. There are some implied protections from unfair taxation, but those loop back to race, creed, poll taxes, etc.

The only protections you have from tax is that you can elect replacement congressmen to change the laws you think are unfair, you can demonstrate in public to get your word heard, and you can challenge the law in court.

Fact is, an item, regardless of what it is, if bought can be taxed based on a percentage of the cost of the item, or based on a fixed doller per item ammount. They can add this tax in ADDITION to sales tax if they see fit, and if the language of that tax does not descriminate against any protected group (race, creed, military service record, etc)

Also, someone else argued that the government owns no part of the internet, has no costs associated with it, and that this tax would not have a specific collections purpose. Well, 1) the tax doesn't require a purpose, it could sumplement the general fund. 2) the government DOES have a cost, and they DO own a part of the internet. 3) you can also factor in public education, school computer training, county library systems, infrastructure upkeep (underground pathways that lines are buried in are owned by the city, not the telco). I could go on...

California is looking to pass this law to help raise money to educate people about fair use, legal use, copyright infringment, and more. The additional revenue will also go into other programs and the general state fund if enough is raised.

Currently, you are ALREADY required to pay tax on songs purchased from iTunes. Since iTunes does not support direct taxing by zip code, there's a line item in your Califirnia state tax return for internet purchases, and you're required to sum up the total of all your online purchases that you didn't already pay sales tax on and state the ammount so you can deduct the taxes from your return (or pay extra if not getting a return). this law would simply require Apple (and others) to collect this tax for you.