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Download Taxes As a Weapon Against File-Sharing
An anonymous reader writes "An examination of a new "digital downloads" taxation law in Washington State suggests that files downloaded via file sharing programs may be covered by the law — meaning that you may be expected to pay taxes based on 'the value of the digital product ... determined by the retail selling price of a similar digital product.' Thus, if you were to download music or movies and not pay the taxes, would you be liable for tax evasion charges? How much do you want to bet the RIAA will push exactly that claim?"
So if I were to download Ubuntu, would I have to pay taxes based on Windows Vista or Windows 7? Ultimate? Professional? Home starter?
If I won a $10,000 iTunes gift card, I'd have to pay taxes on that. (Assuming deductions/exemptions were unavailable/already used)
If somebody gave me $10,000 as a gift, I'd have to pay taxes on that. (Assuming deductions/exemptions were unavailable/already used)
If somebody "gives" me $10,000 in music via bittorrent, why on earth should that be tax-exempt?
In almost every state, items purchased out-of-state must be declared and a "use tax" is due when imported. There is a reasonable exemption limit so you don't have to declare that bag of Cheetos you bought driving home from trip, but if you purchase a car in New Hampshire to avoid Massachusetts sales tax, you still owe money to Massachusetts, and they will collect it.
Just because you downloaded it doesn't mean you shouldn't pay gift/sale taxes. Taxes are part of life. Deal.
Interesting. How much should FreeBSD or Darwin OS cost? Similar to Linux, to Mac OS X or to Windows? What about XCode tools, a 1GB+ dvd image? Pretty much impossible to implement this without pissing everyone off.
Crap. I have free software worth tens of thousands of dollars on my computer at home. I shudder to think how much we have here at work. I'm thinking Microsoft might want in on this action, to put a tax smackdown on Open Source.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Conceptual issues are irrelevant. The RIAA has big, high paid lawyers who will bend you over a barrel and rape your virgin ass all while telling the judge how you downloaded a song and are now guilty of tax evasion.
If they got Capone on tax evasion, they can sure as hell get you!
I think they would need to prove that
a) I didn't rip it from my CD (and then the CD was lost/broke/destroyed so I no longer own it).
b) I didn't record it off of the radio.
c) I didn't record it off of my cable music channels.
d) I didn't record it off of an internet radio station.
e) I wasn't given the song by someone else who owned it legally and gave me their only copy.
Still- it's a novel concept and it motivates the government to do RIAA's enforcement for them. Once again externalizing corporate costs.
Given the hell that is coming in the economy, I wonder if it will be worth it.
e) Provides the most interesting possibilities for creating extremely long chains of custody between various people who each legally owned the song and gave it to each other. For example, you could give your only copy of a song (not retaining anything) and take another song from a library. You can do this now legally. We check out DVD's for tv series and movies and CD's for songs from our library. You listen to it for a while and then return it.
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Something that people always trip up on (in TV shows and in real life) is that lying or conspiring is often a separate crime. So they fail to get you on the original charge but can show that you lied or conspired to break the law and so you are tagged for that. Basically, so much is illegal now that if the government really wants to put you in prison it probably can.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.