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New York Wants To Tax Internet Downloads
An anonymous reader writes "NY is considering taxing 'video and music' downloads to offset a burgeoning budget deficit." How long before we all have meters on our routers? This version is just a 4% tax on movies and songs downloaded from services like iTunes, but I'm sure if they could figure out a bit tax, they would.
This is nothing new; they've been talking about this for months, maybe over a year. It's caused issues with Amazon in the past, if I remember right.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
Social programs are pork as well.
Gone!
New York and California pay more taxes to the fed than they receive back. You should be complaining about New Mexico, Mississippi or Alaska. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/266.html
Since this is a "4% tax" it sounds like they must be planning to levy it as a sales tax to be collected by any vendors who have to collect New York sales tax for transactions within the state; otherwise it doesn't make any sense to talk about "4%". One alternative would perhaps be that it could be a bandwidth tax to be collected by all of the New York ISP's - which would be more collectible: in most cases, your ISP certainly knows where you live even if (as in the case of wireless) it's only where you receive your bill.
But if it's going to be a standard sales tax, that raises all sorts of other problems. Most obviously, it provides a significant disincentive for companies selling downloads to locate in New York; it would be hard for them to collect tax from some company based in Canada, for example. But it also raises the question of how a company knows who they're dealing with; with many payment options, the customer's location need not be given, and since this is an Internet download if the company does ask for an address it would be easy enough for the customer to enter an out-of-state address to avoid paying the tax, and the company would never be the wiser. If the state requires them to use IP addresses to determine the customer's tax liability, it can often be difficult to determine the exact state for an IP address in a border area or in many other situations, and doesn't even address the problem of proxy servers that might be used deliberately or otherwise to avoid paying the tax.
Since the TFA is rather short on specifics, it's hard to tell how unworkable this might be, though whenever the Legislature - any Legislature - is in session, hare-brained schemes abound. It does sound like they're trying to see just how many people they can annoy with this kind of law.
California has almost 3 million illegals. That's almost 8% of the state's population who are not paying taxes, and it's part of the reason the state is $41 billion in the hole (the cost of illigal immigrants to California is $10.5 billion annually, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform). People who think it's "racist" to state that illegal immigrants generally don't pay taxes are full of shit and clearly don't have a clue as to what real racism is.
The New York Yankees are getting $1.312 billion from tax-free bonds for financing their new stadium this year. The New York Mets are getting a mere $636 million from tax-free bonds to finance their new stadium this year as well. That's only $2 billion in tax-free bonds for professional baseball teams that New York City has given out this year.
Overall, this is costing New York taxpayers alone, $1.2 billion, which includes lost revenue and infrastructure improvements (such as improving public transportation).
Everyone is complaining that New York State taxes everything (an 18% soda tax was proposed by our governor recently) but we know that the government loves giving major giant corporations like the Yankees and Mets tons of tax-free money.
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Anyways, regarding online pornography, the industry brought in $2.84 billion in 2006. The cable, pay-per-view and phone sex industries brought in $2.19 billion that year. The governor merely looked at data of what business made good money (this also applies to all digital music and movie downloads) and said "how can we take some of their money for ourselves?" to his advisers. He did the same thing for online retailers like Amazon and NewEgg and said "New York State wants their money".
And the reason that some of the government heads are objecting to taxing porno...
"By taxing it you're legitimizing it," said Michael Long, chairman of New York's Conservative Party. "You're sending a message to the children, you're sending a message to the teenagers, if you're taxing it -- how can it be wrong? I don't know how you can sink much deeper."
So by that logic, you shouldn't tax fatty foods, soda, beer, or cigarettes as those things are actually physically harmful but because they've been taxed, teenagers think they are legitimate and not harmful. I know when I was young, the moment I heard that they taxed cigarettes and they were legitimate (whatever the hell that means) I said "I have got to smoke me some".
And yes, pornography is extremely harmful to all of our teenagers, my eye exams have gotten worse and worse since I first discovered adults films and other activities.
Half of this post is serious, half is in sarcasm. Either way I haven't liked hearing the words 'New York' and 'tax' within fifteen sentences of each other for a long time. Go Mets (and tax free this season!).
It isn't exactly true that illegal immigrants don't pay taxes. For example, many illegal immigrants use a fake social security number so they can get a job. Just like any other worker, part of their income is withheld and sent to the government (especially FICA and payroll taxes). In fact, since they are using fake social security numbers, they can't file for any refund and often times end up paying more than they would have if they had been legal citizens (since many lower income workers end up receiving money back at tax time). While some illegal immigrants work under-the-table jobs and don't pay any income taxes, they still pay sales taxes and other non-income taxes. In addition, many illegal immigrants avoid taking advantage of social services out of fear of being deported, making them less likely to be a drain on these taxpayer-supported institutions.
While illegal immigration is a complex and vexing issue, do not make it out that illegals do not pay taxes. Here is a look at the issue: http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1424.html