Slashdot Mirror
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".
The upside of them metering one's bandwidth use would be that many people would start taking action over their windows zombie box.
New York taxes everything, a lot of it has to do with the maintenance of New York City. They get subsidies from all sorts of things, taxes, bus fares, chances are if you buy something in New York, some of that money goes to New York City. In fact, even living in New York City is taxed.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
No tax on torrents? Cool! Bye Bye iTunes.
I would happily forward 4% of the bits that comes into my router to the NY city hall if that can help them balance their budget.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
. . . that forces states to pay back the money they receive from the Federal government, and puts a harsh salary and compensation cap on politicians in those states who elect to take Federal bailout funds. The likes of California and New York clearly have no concept of what it means to "spend less," and current taxpayers are fleeing by the tens of thousands, causing them to create asinine taxes like the one in TFA and causing even more people and companies to head to more tax-friendly states. A government should be forced to plan its finances like a responsible household, taking into consideration risk, debt and spending just like the rest of us have to in reality land. After all, it's our money they're spending. Why is this so hard to comprehend?
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?
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
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!
fee on all music and video downloads â" including pornography. ... But not everyone is on board with the idea of profiting off porn. The chairman of New York's Conservative Party says that taxing it legitimizes it.
Evidently, giving porn a tax exemption wouldn't legitimize it at all.
So what they're really saying is to hit the torrent store for our online "purchases" rather then stay legit and send more tax revenue to a bunch of $100K/yr earning public servants who got NYS into this budget problem in the first place.
I'm sure this was proposed over a $1000/plate fund-raiser dinner.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
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.
The main reason for taxes on good is the use of the infrastructure, the roads and the like for the movement of goods, as well as to get money, but downloads don't actually provide any wear on the infrastructure.
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.
Don't worry, with having to pay for the bail out and sundry little extra added expenses, you will soon see a simplified 1040 form:
1. How much money did you make?
2. Give it to us.
No need for complex calculations.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
right next to the part where Congress holds themselves to account.
Honestly, everything you attributed to NY and California is attributable to the Federal Government. Worse, they Feds have no restraint whereas states do. The Feds aren't even bothering to try and balance the budget.
Face it, through years of manipulation Congressmen have managed to lay the blame for all things at the feet of people who have money while themselves spending money they don't have.
Congressmen vilify the businessman who sends his kids to private school, flies private jets, and vacations overseas, all the while doing the same thing on our dime. Congress chides the business for laying off people, losing money, or asking for money, all the while doing the same thing.
Look, the majority has spoken, they want all they can get from those who make money while there is still some to get.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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
You do realize we already pay a tax for bandwidth. Look at your internet bill.
Really? Because I thought it all just went to the ISP, which used it to upgrade their infrastructure^W^W^W hand out golden parachutes.
That's funny . . . California lost 144,000 people between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008, and New York lost 126,000 during the same period. Both states' populations are shrinking, not growing. According to you, state spending should be falling, but both states are tens of billions in the hole and scrambling to come up with new taxes to make up for the revenue they're losing from the people who left and continue to leave for more tax-friendly states. You can spin it all you want, but people and companies are getting the hell out of CA and the Northeast, and the primary reasons are high taxes and high cost of living. Increasing spending (which requires higher taxes on the poor souls who choose to stay when you have a negative population growth) will only make people leave faster.
And I'll probably get marked troll for this...
But spend less money. Stop trying to tax us to death.
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.
Did you even read the article you linked? They buried it, but these are total losses not net losses; both CA and NY populations continue to grow overall due to births and immigrations greatly outnumbering tax fliers.
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.
What part of "illegal immigrant" implies a certain race? I think you are the racist one for suggesting that only certain races come here illegally. They come from all countries/backgrounds/races btw.
Hey I'm fine with it if that means we can have a "Mistress" tax that applies to Mayors and Governors of NY. I'm thinking like 15% tax on the hush money they are given?
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.
- - - -
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
California has almost 3 million illegals. That's almost 8% of the state's population who are not paying taxes,
You know, I hear this all the time here in TN, where we have a 9.25% sales tax and no state income tax. Maybe you can answer the question that your intellectual kinsmen here never can seem to answer.
Where is it that these illegals are buying groceries? And gasoline? Where do they live that there isn't a property tax? I'm serious when I ask this. I have to pay taxes on most stuff that I buy, but then I find out that illegals don't. Are they simply shopping at the same places as me, and producing an "illegal alien" identification card that lets them skip paying the taxes? Does the gas pump knock off the 18 cent federal tax and 21 cent state tax on gasoline if a car pulls up with an unlicensed driver? I've looked closely many times when Mexicans were getting gas and the pump shows the same $/gallon as my pump, but maybe that's to fool me and when they go to pay the cashier knocks the tax off?
Let me know, if you can. The mouthbreathing racists around here seem to turn into stroke victims when I ask them such questions.
Do you have ESP?