California Seeks To Tax Rocket Launches, Which Are Already Taxed (arstechnica.com)

The state of California is looking into taxing its thriving rocket industry. The Franchise Tax Board has issued a proposed regulation for public comment that would require companies that launch spacecraft to pay a tax based upon "mileage" traveled by that spacecraft from California. Ars Technica reports: The proposal says that California-based companies that launch spacecraft will have to pay a tax based upon "mileage" traveled by that spacecraft from California. (No, we're not exactly sure what this means, either). The proposed regulations were first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, and Thomas Lo Grossman, a tax attorney at the Franchise Tax Board, told the newspaper that the rules are designed to mirror the ways taxes are levied on terrestrial transportation and logistics firms operating in California, like trucking or train companies. The tax board is seeking public input from now until June 16, when it is expected to vote on the proposed tax. The federal government already has its own taxes for commercial space companies, and until now no other state has proposed taxing commercial spaceflight. In fact most other states, including places like Florida, Texas, and Georgia, offer launch providers tax incentives to move business into their areas.

Comments

I'm all for it

[rsilvergun]

billions of my tax dollars went into making these things possible. Maybe if the folks profiting from them weren't stashing all their cash overseas I'd be a little less interested. But well, that's not how these thing go.

Re:If they really don't want to have rocket launch

[Aighearach]

No, if you pay attention to the part where the tax goes down the farther you fly, you can realize that the purpose of this tax is to discourage the "space" tourism flights that barely go anywhere, without much impact on real launches that have a traditional purpose, like putting hardware into orbit, or flying far enough to get some science done.

Space tourism flights would have significant negative impacts on the surrounding community, and would be much more frequent than satellite launches; even when the tourism flights are much much smaller business. You don't want small fries inconveniencing millions of people to make thousands of dollars, that is just not good management of the commons. But if those flights were generating lots of tax revenue, then maybe the convenience is worth it.

But also, maybe people in Texas have different quality of life expectations, and won't be bothered. Everybody wins! Just like, here in Oregon we don't want to breath the fumes from gas refineries, so we let them do that in California and we pay an extra ~ 10 cents a gallon for locally cleaner air. Everybody wins!