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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.
TFA says that this will include a tax on porn, but not all of the lawmakers are on-board with the idea of taxing porn. Apparently taxing "legitimate" movies and music is fine, but a porn tax is bad.
Things that make you go hmmmm....
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
If more boxes are going to the shop to be cleaned, that means those shops would be hiring more cleaning techs. At least in theory.
Not to mention the sales tax on the cleaning service.
So, all in all, this just MIGHT help their local economy.
Most online retailers hate New York because we have horrible taxes, I believe NewEgg stopped requiring users to pay the tax in NY which caused them some issues. This will only exacerbate the intertube hatred of NY
You wouldn't think that a state could tax interstate trade, but if NewEgg (which appears to operate out of California) really did experience "issues" then I have a solution to that. Nothing would get the attention of the state of New York quite like every out-of-state online retailer refusing to sell to any NY resident or to ship items to a NY address. When customers complain, refer them to the problems NewEgg experienced and encourage them to take it up with the NY state legislature. The point is to make this an utter failure. That's definitely in our interests because if NY does this successfully, you can count on other states following suit.
If this happened, I doubt it would have to happen more than once to put an end to this sort of BS. Just imagine the precedent it would set.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Think about it for a moment. We have enough processing power that we can tie taxes to specific projects at the fraction of a cent level.
Why not let the voters vote for projects AND the taxes to fund them? If they want another school, then they get a property tax increase of $3.15 on all property in area X.
If they want to fill in the pot holes on 1st Avenue then they increase the sales tax by 0.013%. And when the project is finished, the tax is repealed.
Let the people see EXACTLY what they're spending the money on.
If someone runs for office claiming to want to "cut taxes" then let them specify EXACTLY what projects will be cut and the people can see how much they'll be saving.
I'm sick of the attitude "we've got stuff to pay for and we need to figure out how to raise revenue to do it" regardless of how they choose to raise it. Here's a novel approach to government: we've got X dollars, how can we spend it to maximize the quality of life of our citizens? I don't get to randomly pull in more money from secondary sources if I decide I want a bigger TV this year, so why should the government?
That's easy. There's this common misconception that politicians don't understand things like balanced budgets. They do. They're power-hungry liars but otherwise they are not stupid. They know how to play this game and they know that the average person is far too trusting and naive.
The reason why they don't carefully spend our money and otherwise respect and honor the citizens is because there is no political power to be had by doing that. That is the nature of political power. I wish we'd be more open and honest about that instead of beating the drum of patriotism and claiming that the expansion of government is "for the children" or "for our safety". A minimal government that is fiscally responsible and leaves the citizens alone as much as possible just doesn't satisfy the sort of fevered egos who are attracted to positions of political power.
As a side note, to get a better idea of the sort of manipulation that goes on, just research "problem, reaction, solution" which is also known as Hegel's "thesis, antithesis, synthesis". If you can notice that pattern just one time you'll start seeing it everywhere. See that and patterns like it and perhaps then you, too can experience the joy of predicting the outcome of political "debates" in the media (it's easy -- whichever prefabricated solution does the most to expand government is the one that will probably "win") for people who neither believe you nor question the high success rate of your predictions. There's just not a lot of understanding of the idea that our politicians have been going down the same path for quite some time and that they intend to travel further down that same path.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein