New York State Budget Relies On Entertainment Tax

einer writes "Facing a budget shortfall, New York State Governor David Paterson crafts a budget that taxes iPod music downloads and other 'digitally delivered entertainment services.' On the chopping block is $700 million in school aid and $3.5 billion in health care subsidies."

Comments

Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[eldavojohn]

Simple solution if you think this is unjust highway robbery targeting the technically gifted: Find a friend or family living in a different state and get their address. Call your credit card company and add their name and address to a billable location for your credit card. Then when you set up your credit card information on iTunes or Amazon or whatever, list their address as the billing address. They can't apply the tax even if you are downloading in NY.

Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid

[Coopjust]

Amazon is charging tax on Amazon orders placed by NY residents despite the fact that Amazon has no facilities in NY due to an unconstitutional law that hasn't been challenged yet. It says if you have an affiliate in the state (like, affiliate links), you are liable to pay tax.

Newegg.com started doing it too, but two months later they sent an email to NT residents that stated (in a nutshell), "We looked at the law with our lawyers and there is no way NY could ever win this. They'd be stupid to take it to court. Therefore, we're going to stop taxing NY customers again."

Somebody has to take this law to court. The problem is, no one has the balls to.

Sleazy

[qoncept]

"Let's propose tax cuts where it'll hurt em so they'll favor our new tax."

Less Government for Less Money

[Nom du Keyboard]

I would rather have less government for less money. Did you ever note that politicians always say they'll have to cut the most inflammatory items - police, fire, libraries - first? How about their own salaries next time for starters?

New York subsidizes the quite a few losers.

[FatSean]

Those losers being states that take in more federal tax money than they contribute. New York gives up 1/3 of it's tax revenue to states like MS,MO,AL,LA,WV,NC,SC, etc...You know, the 'conservative' states where 'small government' and 'less taxes' get a huge response.

Imagine if the Federal Government let New York keep that money in state...instant balanced budget and then some.

Re:On the positive side

[larry bagina]

bleeding money. Interesting. Let's say you had a gaping leg wound that was bleeding, well, blood. For this analogy, assume you're a hemophiliac and the bleeding won't stop on it's own accord. Would you get some blood packs and inject them into your arm? No, you'd stop the bleeding (and inject blood if needed). Raising taxes doesn't stop the bleeding; cutting spending does.

Whaaambulance

[mpapet]

Your post, and the parent post are choking on their own misinformation.

The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world

If you want to pick a *single* statistic, to tie your frustrations to, then that's about as bad as it gets.

I think we would all agree that the American economy remains one of the most vibrant in the world. It remains one of the most business friendly. http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/10/smallbusiness/best_countries_for_small_biz.smb/

8 years of explicitly promoting a lax regulatory environment for every category of business in the U.S. hasn't seemed to have helped keep jobs in the U.S. at all. Wages certainly haven't gone up for those making less than $50,000/yr in the last eight years.

So let's chop away at those taxes! Publicly funded law enforcement is overrated. Organized crime/gangs do a good job protecting the neighborhood. Courts? Jails? Don't need em. Let's get rid of utility regulation too! You are perfectly willing to pay way more for electricity or safe fresh water at monopoly prices?

It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.

Re:Whaaambulance

[Neeperando]

white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories

So they said, "If you're going to make shitty loans to white people, you have to make shitty loans to black people, too." It sounds like they were making shitty loans already.

I know a lot of the more conservative folks around here don't believe racism is real, but here's my opinion: Making bad loans to poor people is stupid, but making bad loans to poor white people and not to poor black people is stupid and racist.

In any case, you're just proving my point even more. Do you really think that ACORN suing banks to force them to be equal-opportunity idiots is the sole cause of the crisis? According to this, this, and this, less than a quarter of the subprime loans were made by institutions that were covered by the CRA. Also, there's no data to suggest that CRA subprime loans have a higher default rate than the other 80% of subprime loans. And if ACORN sued Wells Fargo and CitiBank, how come Wells Fargo didn't go under because of all the bad loans it was forced to make in the last few years?

There's two sides to every story, and usually both sides are wrong. Certainly the government was stupid to encourage banks to make bad loans and are not without culpability here, but the banks were doing it anyway.

My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix

[kenp2002]

Consitiutional Amendments
"No governement agency at the federal, state, or local level shall spend in excess of the previous 3 years average of income from taxes and fees collected except through a voter approved bonding" (Prevent Overspending)

"No person shall have their property tax increased beyond 3% in any calendar year, nor increased greater then 100% since the time of purchase or transfer of ownership of their primary residence by any goverment agency." (Prevent trying to steal and redistributed land through taxing people out of their homes)

"A person shall be secure in their private property and eminent domain shall be restricted for use solely for the appropriation for government owned and operated use and may not be transfered to private ownership."
(Clean up 'public use' for land stealing)

"No company shall be tax on profits in excess of 5% of net revenue by the federal government and taxed no more then 15% when combined with local and state taxes." (Limit corporate income tax, so states at most can tax corporate income at 10%)

"The pay of corporate officers of a publically traded company shall be a scale of the median salary paid by the company to it's employees and contractors and may not exceed 10 times the median salary of the company in salary and no more then 20 times the median salary in stock compensation at the time of aquisition of those stock options." (If the typical employee makes $40,000 a year then the CEO can never make more then $400,000 in a salary and cannot receive more then $800,000 is stock in a year. If they want a raise, most employees must get a raise also)

"The term of any senate or house member shall be limited to 2 terms"

Those would go a long way.

Re:On the positive side

[nabsltd]

You can't drink water or juice? You're actually claiming that you are forced to drink regular soda. You somehow suffer without it. Seriously?

Yes, seriously.

Pick something that you consume a lot more of than the majority of the population (high-speed internet...we'll tax you on each byte transferred, etc.), and replace that with "regular soda" in your argument.

Once enough people stop drinking sugared beverages, then the government will have to put a tax on the "diet" ones to make up for the tax shortfall. Taxing non-diet soda is just another "what 'for the good of the children/fat people/whatever' reason can we use to get more tax money?" plan.

Basically, you try to convince all the people who "won't be impacted by the tax" to vote for it (or to vote for the representatives who implemented it). Then, you can get all the people impacted by this tax to vote for the "diet soda tax", because it will even things out.