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Can New Chicago Taxes On Netflix, Apple, Spotify Withstand Legal Challenges?
Mr D from 63 writes: Today, a new "cloud tax" takes effect in the city of Chicago, targeting online databases and streaming entertainment services. Residents who stream movies and music from companies like Netflix and Spotify will now need to pay an additional 9% tax. This also applies to Chicago businesses that pay to use databases online. Chicago expects to collect $12 million a year as a result of the new tax ruling. From the 24/7 Wall St. story: "Also worth noting is that the city’s tax ruling in both cases avoids the issue of whether there is a close-enough connection (nexus, in legalese) to require providers like Netflix or others to collect either tax. International law firm ReedSmith weighs in on this point as well: '[O]nce the Department begins to audit and assess customers located within the city, many of those customers are likely to demand that providers collect the tax going forward. As a result, many providers will likely feel the need to register to collect the taxes, despite lacking nexus, and despite having strong arguments against the Department’s expansive interpretation of its taxing ordinances.'"
Legalized theft.
You want what someone else has, and you're willing to steal it at the barrel of a gun.
Fuck you.
As their earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, the Beatles were liable to a 95% supertax introduced by Harold Wilson's Labour government (hence the lyrics "There's one for you, nineteen for me").
International law firm ReedSmith weighs in on this point as well: '[O]nce the Department begins to audit and assess customers located within the city, many of those customers are likely to demand that providers collect the tax going forward. As a result, many providers will likely feel the need to register to collect the taxes, despite lacking nexus, and despite having strong arguments against the Department’s expansive interpretation of its taxing ordinances.'"
When the government starts auditing people and dunning for money, their first reaction is going to be, "how do I throw these clowns out of office?", they are not going to make a hue and cry and demand their service providers to collect taxes. These providers are also savvy, they will spend a little on lobbying, fund a few challengers and some incumbents ...
Knowing Chicago it looks more like another shakedown to get some campaign cash than to collect a new tax.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In case the crime and murder rate wasn't enough.
Will the last person to leave Chicago please turn off the lights?
Taxation of Illegal Income in the United States
At least in the US, tax collection agencies have never balked at collecting their share of your ill-gotten gains. In fact, it's a worse tax situation than legitimate business, because there are classes of expense, such as bribes, which cannot be deducted.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I suppose I could see them complaining if it was a flat 95%, but afaik the UK does Marginal taxes the same as the US, meaning they paid the same taxes as a lorry driver up to certain point.
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you're still living very, very well. Also, these high level marginal tax rates are about the only thing that I've ever seen that solves the problems with income inequality. Specifically how a civilization leans towards oligarchy and stagnation as a smaller and smaller group of people claim all the money for themselves. Wealth builds on wealth, and at least here in America we don't see any end to that. The pie might get bigger, but if my slice gets tinnier ever year it hardly matters...
Put another way, I saw an interview with a multi millionaire complaining she didn't have any political voice anymore because the billionaires money crowded her out...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And all those little taxes, from city, state, and country, all add up to between 40% and 60% of most US citizens' income. How much is enough? No one (well, maybe some nutjobs) wants to go back to laissez-faire, but I think it's not unreasonable to look at the amounts of graft and waste that occurs and demand better accountability before simply bending over for each new tax like a good, compliant citizen.
I have to wonder if the Chicago politicians even know what the hell they're really taxing when they attempted to tax all "cloud computing and streaming". It feels a lot more like a desperation move that they're hoping no one calls them on. Adding new taxes like this also increases the regulatory burden for its citizens and the city itself, which indirectly reduces the taxes effectiveness by increasing the overhead of compliance. It would be far better to simply adjust the property tax rate to match the expected revenue increase. Of course, that's a lot more visible, and the taxes there are already apparently pretty terrible, which is why they probably balked at that idea.
So, "get over it?" I wonder how many people will "get over it" by getting the hell out of Chicago - or at least the city itself? Having visited the area recently, I can assure you that there are lots of very expansive and attractive outlying towns and suburbs suitable for both homes and businesses.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This is way off topic, but what the fuck is happening to slashdot. I just now noticed something blaring from my headphones on the floor. Apparently it was some kind of audio ad and for the life of me I didn't know which part of the webpage was playing it.!??!
Then I happen to notice that the 'busy circle' at the top of the chrome tab has been spinning for at least 5minutes. Are you fucking kidding me?
Here are two of them that I noticed. God only knows how many others were busy doing god knows what. (liverail.com and advertising.com) (I wont post actual links)
I can't stand the "slashdot is dying" meme, but I think I am close to moving on to another news aggregate. -Slashdot reader since ~2000AD
One needs to "starve the beast" the beast being our own tendencies to vote to lavish on ourselves, with disproportionately wasteful government super-markup.
It is voracious, and always spends as much as it can get, and is always chronically short, needing to borrow. Actually, most borrowing is viewed as income to spend -- they can get away with borrowing X percent of GDP. It has nothing to do with need and everything to do with more money to spend.
Starve that beast. Shut off new inventions of income.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Right Wing
Right Wingers run Chicago? Detroit? Baltimore? Stockton? Flint? Cleveland? Camden? Oakland?
WTF are you smoking?
Every one of these hellholes has been under near exclusive control of left wing hate mongers and race baiters since the late '60s. How in the hell is anything that goes on there — particularly municipal tax policy — related to the Right?
Doesn't anyone remember ...?
No. They don't. People are so far removed from actual suffering and deprivation that they can't fathom what actual pain is like. Today the common denizen of your liberal meccas are morbidly obese; they have never known a day of hunger in their lives. Work is purely optional as the safety hammock insures as much sit'n on the couch time as desired.
This also applies to Chicago businesses that pay to use databases online.
This would be enough to cause the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to relocate to another state. I'm sure that Indiana, Wisconsin, or Michigan would welcome them with open arms.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
it has to do with how a dollar circulates. I'm in pretty bad shape financially. I had 3 close family members get hit with major illnesses all at once. I'm still recovering and I'm not sure I ever will. What I'm saying is I spend just about ever dollar I get my hands on paying debt and buying food/shelter/transportation. There's a little discretionary funds in there for my kid. I try to let her do thing things her friends (who's parents didn't get economically cock punched non stop for 10 years) do.
Now take a Donald Trump. No matter how greedy he is there's only just so much he can buy. At some point his money is just sitting around, doing nothing. He'll invest some of it, lose some of it, etc. But He's only got so much time in the day to do that. Eventually it becomes a war chest laying around doing nothing.
When we take it even further, to the level the Waltons have achieved what we have is pretty much the dark ages. You've got a small group of folks with _all_ the wealth. They're more or less Gods (Divine Right of Kings, anyone?). They stop investing because, heh, why should they? They already have the best civilization has to offer. As a result things can really only get worse for them.
If the above sounds complicated it's because it is. That's what makes cutting the marginal tax rate so seductive. It sound like an easy answer to the world's problems. Supply side economics, right? But there really is a reason we called them Voodoo Economics...
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That's a ridiculous assertion. Most of us understand quite well that states get their taxes in a variety of ways.
Oregon's northern neighbor Washington State, for instance, collects sales tax but has no income tax, whereas California has both an income AND a sales tax. Nearly all states also impose property taxes, and of course they tax businesses. Ultimately, everything gets paid for by individual consumers, either directly (as with sales, income, or property taxes), or indirectly though increased prices of goods and services (as with business taxes and fees).
Ultimately, you can boil it down to an estimated percentage of individual income. According to Forbes, state tax ranking is as follows for someone earning $50K:
* New York ranks at #50 at 12.6%
* California is #47 at 10.4%
* Illinois is #38 at 10.2%
* Oregon is #35 at 10.10%
* Washington is #24 at 9.4%
* Wyoming is #1 at 6.9%
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.