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Pennsylvania To Apply 6% 'Netflix Tax' (allflicks.net)
An anonymous reader writes: Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania has signed into law a new revenue package that will require residents to pay a 6% sales tax on their streaming subscriptions. AllFlicks reports: "Though the term 'Netflix tax' has become popular, laws like this don't just affect Netflix -- they also affect competitors like Hulu and HBO Now. App purchases and ebooks are also affected. They recently decided on a hefty $31.5 billion budget, and they came up $1.3 billion short of paying for it. The government is trying to close that funding gap, and streaming subscribers are being stuck with the bill." Magazine and newspaper subscriptions, as well as digital versions of the Bible, will be exempt from the digital downloads tax, reports CBS Local News in Pittsburgh.
The tax is based on the billing address of the subscriber. A VPN won't protect you from that, and you'd know that if you read the damn article. Perhaps the real problem is the overreach of big government by the jackass liberals. You'll get more of this shit if you vote for Hillary.
Doesn't this bump into the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Does this really surprise anyone since it's coming from the state with a compressed air tax?
Full text of enacted bill.
FULL TITLE: Act 84 of 2016
EXPLANATION: http://www.revenue.pa.gov/Gene...
SUMMARY:
http://www.revenue.pa.gov/Gene...
FULL TEXT:
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/c...
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
The PA legislature has a Republican majority in both houses. So... Nice try?
Except there does not appear to actually be such an exemption. It appears to have been made up, probably to generate outrage and hence clicks.
Here is what the state says the new changes are. It includes 'e-books and otherwise taxable printed matter'. It does not mention bibles anywhere.
So, bibles must not be 'otherwise taxable printed matter', right? Nope. Here is the list of what is taxable. The list starts on page 14. First item on the list is 'Books', and right under the heading is this statement. "Tax is imposed on books, stationery and stationery supplies, including Bibles and religious publications sold by religious groups."
Oh, and further down the list we find that textbooks are NON-TAXABLE.
The summary is terrible.
Textbooks purchased from or through accredited schools are exempted. The Bible is not specifically exempted, but purchases by qualified charitable organizations, volunteer fire companies, religious organizations and nonprofit educational institutions are unless used in an unrelated business capacity--there's no particular preference for religious organizations over other social nonprofits, and nothing singling out particular religions.
The tax is not specifically on streaming video. It extends the state's 6% sales tax to online purchases--streaming video is included, as are video downloads, streaming and downloaded audio, and other online purchases like ebooks, apps, games, e-greeting cards, etc.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Watch that...
Not only can you get sued for pirating digital content, but now pirating can be considered a form of tax evasion too.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
some don't. See, the world is complicated like that. Go watch some speeches from Bernie Sanders on progressivism. Folks like him, Barry Obama & even Hilary are getting stuff done. There's 40 years of regressive policies by Regan et al and billions were spent making that happen. You're not going to change that by pouting about the opportunists among the Democrats.
And nice straw man ya got there. Shame if anything were to happen to him...
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Not so fast. What actually constitutes the original?
Some of the books in the Old Testament date back over 2,500 years. There's solid archaeological evidence to support this. But the original texts almost certainly don't exist anymore. The origins aren't entirely certain, even. One hypothesis is that the Pentateuch is comprised of texts from scrolls that were compiled from older documents during the Babylonian Exile. Also, what constitutes the original? Is it the earlier texts that were compiled to create the Pentateuch, or is it the original compilation? Regardless, neither have been found, and may well not even exist any longer.
The New Testament isn't a simple matter, either. Jesus probably spoke Aramaic, but his words weren't recorded until mant years or decades later, in Latin and Greek. There are no texts attributed to Jesus. And most of his Apostles couldn't write, either. It's hypothesized that the words of Jesus were recorded in a document, known as Q, from which the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke borrowed from. While the Gospel of Thomas (not in the Bible) takes the form of a document like Q, the actual document hasn't been found and might not exist. The Gospel of John is a later document, many decades after Jesus. The original manuscripts also are lost, though there are many early manuscripts and translations. Prior to the printing press, these manuscripts were copied by hand, and subject to error. There are also many early Gospels that weren't included in the Bible, including the Gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Philip, and Judas. These decisions were made by the early Catholic Church.
There isn't a one to one equivalence of words from Hebrew, Latin, or Greek to modern English or any other modern language. There are also differences in the meaning of words and idioms that would have made sense at the time of authorship but don't have meaning today. There is a lot of flexibility for a translator to try to convey the meaning and make the text understandable in modern languages. Any translation of that scale is a unique work of the translator, so it's legitimate for it to be copyrighted. Some great authors have contributed their efforts to translate the Bible, including Tolkien.
The idea that the Bible is the sole source of truth is also a very Protestant idea, but one that is rejected by Catholicism. While Catholicism teaches that the Bible is true and cannot be contradicted, it is not considered the sole authority. It is subject to interpretation, hence its role alongside sacred tradition and the magisterium of the Church. While many evangelical Protestants will say that the truth of the Bible is self-evident, Catholicism teaches it as a matter of faith.
Let's be honest, you're not going to find the original texts. They've probably long since been destroyed. The loss of the Great Library of Alexandria probably took some of the manuscripts with it, and was a tremendous loss to history. Really, it's a matter of faith.
They care about power, control and expanding their empire (bigger government).
This used to be the case in the times of LBJ, but in the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations the size of the federal government as % of GDP went down. In contrast it went up with Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr.
Obama's budgets as % of GDP have been smaller than those of the sainted Ronald Reagan.
a) They keep increasing school budges, especially to poor and undeserved areas. WRONG
b) They keep increasing the minimum wage to encourage people to feel productive and appreciated in the labor force as well as be able to afford a living. WRONG
c) Require them to work for free or loose the already paltry safety net that ensures they don't end up hungry and homeless. DING DING DING DING
Long Prison sentence for minor offenses are also a popular program for the GOP to help the poor. People get to learn all kinds of valuable skills in there. They should probably change the name from "State Penitentiary" to "Worker retraining program." The MOTO writes itself: Go in as a petty thief and graduate as a Seasoned Gangster
Either the translation process is formalized enough and predictable enough, or the result is made up garbage.
This, kids, is what they're talking about when they say, "False dichotomy".
(The poster evidently speaks no other languages and thus has never done any translation work.)