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Philly Requiring Bloggers To Pay $300
Kurofuneparry writes "Pennsylvania generally and Philadelphia specifically have had a number of budget issues and some bloggers are seeing the results. From the article: '... yes, cash-strapped cities can't very well ignore potential sources of income. But at the same time, there must be some room for discretion and common sense.'"
It's not absurd, it's restraint on speech. To say that you need a business license to use your free speech rights if that earns you a dollar is just absurd. There is likely an income threshold where a business license isn't needed if you don't make enough money.
She needs a lawyer. If the state laws in PA really are that fucked up and she needs a business license, she could take it to court and it will likely be found unconstitutional.
If she does get the business license though, she can now write off all business expenses including the time she used to write in the blog. That includes a percentage of her home bills that are a needed as a part of the business.
Her federal taxable income will go way down and she will be eligible for small business tax deductions and credits.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
The IRS would consider this to be nothing more than a hobby. They define a business as an entity that is expected to make a profit. This clearly would not be expected to make a profit.
Anything that doesn't aim to recoup it's own costs, let alone make a profit isn't a business. This intent is fully visible, that operating several years with loss, that she goes on funding her hobby without making changes.
But two wrongs don't make a right. Philadelphia has been losing population since the 1950s, partly with shit like this. In fact, all of PA has budget troubles, but not because the government doesn't rake enough cash in, but in both cases because of having too many union workers, ridiculous pensions, and spending too much. In fact, they are raising the school taxes here because of the losses in the 2008-9 stock market decline and apparently the teachers can gamble in the market and never lose. I believe Philly too was looking how to recover cityworker pensions though increased taxes? But who will bail out the taxpayers?
And whoever wrote the line in the summary "yes, cash-strapped cities can't very well ignore potential sources of income." Fuck you. The taxpayers are not some piggybank to be siphoned off at will. There are very few places I see that really cut spending even though the private sector does. The governments' job used to be to carry out it's limited enumerated duties and impose a tax needed to cover it, not maximize it's own revenue.
Net Income != Profits. She probably didn't make enough to pay for her hosting. Perhaps we need to go back to the model where people get free hosting in exchange for a 3rd party putting ads on the site. Then Bloggers can blog without having to report the "income" of trying to cover some of their expenses.
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The issue with the lemonade stand, as I recall, was not tax issues but rather the lack of a temporary vendor's license from the health department. Which is quite reasonable if you have a booth at a farmer's market type-thing and serving a business-level number of customers. That's not a kid on a corner selling lemonade. That's an honest-to-god vendor, unless you think she was able to haul down all the stuff needed for a booth at those kind of things herself?