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

Stupid

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

This is so stupid that it makes my head hurt. Way to fuck over the private space industry, California!

Re:Stupid

[The Snowman]

Way to fuck over the private space industry, California!

The private space industry will not be fucked over. They will leave, and go to places like Texas and Florida who, according to the summary, offer tax incentives to do business there.

The only entities who might be "fucked over" are the California citizens who might otherwise work at these companies. Although, if they are smart, they will move to Texas or Florida too.

Re:Stupid

[Phylter]

California is where new industries go to die. Why bother going there where companies that create jobs are punished? You're right, they'll go elsewhere and thrive instead of staying there.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is Californians bring their political diseases when they move to saner places.

Re:Stupid

[thegarbz]

Right, just like Hollywood closed and now all movies are made in Vancouver.

You'd be amazed at the number of American block busters not even made on the continent let alone Vancouver or California. Your attempt at sarcasm fails due to it actually being very real. The industry is quite sensitive to tax breaks, and while Hollywood may be the heart of the industry, the production and a lot of the dollars actually go elsewhere.

That said it was funny seeing someone in Australia install yellow coverings on all our black traffic lights in a city to try and make the country look more like America.

Re:Stupid

[Trailer Trash]

My city (Franklin, TN, part of the Nashville/Franklin/Murfreesboro metro area) is aggressively recruiting California companies to relocate here. Our two biggest scores within the last couple of years were the Nissan North America headquarters (brought 1300 people from the president down) and the Carl's Jr./Hardees headquarters. CA is bad enough that we're getting companies of that size to literally pack up and move 3000 miles.

It doesn't hurt that we have no geographic boundaries to growth, so land is still pretty cheap. $500K will get you a 3 bedroom 1300 sq ft bungalow in Burbank. Here, it buys you a 3000 sq ft house on an acre, or more house and less land if you'd like.

And we have about the same sales tax rate as CA (9.25%), but no state income tax.

Would it surprise you to know that our economy is thriving?

Re:Stupid

[Trailer Trash]

California's GDP kinda disproves your entire premise.

Cali is where Companies go to grow. Conservatives like to think that "big government" (like the kind that paves roads, funds schools, funds fire depts.) are bad...

No conservative is against the sort of things that government is supposed to do, such as paving roads and funding schools. Hello, straw man. They do tend to be against stuff that government shouldn't be doing, like taxing rockets.

You know... MI which is poisoning its citizens with lead and NC which lost over a billion dollars in economic activity over their hate-filled law.

LOL! This is what happens when you believe media matters - you look like an idiot. They were claiming that NC would lose that much money over some period of years, but in fact it had no impact at all. A bunch of people who weren't going to visit there decided to not visit there. It's like the "boycott" the same group of lunatics had against Chick-Fil-A (which resulted in CFA's biggest single day sales ever). I'm actually going to visit NC this year specifically to offset any lunatics that actually did decide not to go, because I know their law wasn't "hate filled".

This is how a well run democratic republic is supposed to operate... Say "we have this idea... what do you think" and people tell them "fuck you, you're nuts"... /rant against stupidity which refuses to see things in any way other than the way they want.

The problem in CA is that there are so few people to say "fuck you, you're nuts" that they're not heard. And they don't have the money that the leftist looneys in the state have, and you can't talk to a Democrat without giving it money first.

Re:Stupid

[Scottingham]

NC lost numerous concerts, conferences, NCAA tournaments and other large events due directly to HB-2. None of that counts the individual people who decided not to vacation here. It was easily $1 Billion in economic activity lost. Easily. The NCAA tournament (which UNC won!) would have been held in NC except for, yep, HB-2.

No impact at all?

Re:Oh that's easy

[michelcolman]

Amazing how nobody bothers to read the actual regulation, not even the article authors ("we're not exactly sure what that means either").

If I understand the actual regulation correctly:

For every launch from California, they take the number of miles traveled within the state of California and divide this by the total number of miles from launch to separation. This is one factor in the calculation, weighted at 80%.

Another factor, weighted by 20%, is the number of launches from California divided by the number of launches in total for that contract. That means that if you have one expensive launch from Texas and one cheap launch from California, under the same contract, California will take a disproportionate amount of tax because they will consider 50% of the total contract value for the "departure factor" part.

The regulation has an example with numbers. It looks like they want companies to launch high value missions from California and cheaper missions from elsewhere, since the "departure factor" appears to be the dominant factor in the calculation. And they want California launches to take place as close to the border as possible, minimizing distance traveled over the state.