PlayStation Begins Collecting Amusement Tax From Chicago Users (chicagotribune.com)

schwit1 writes: PlayStation users in Chicago on Wednesday began paying a 9 percent tax on streaming content as the gaming company starts complying with a city levy. The Sony-owned company joins other streaming services including Spotify, Netflix and Hulu in complying with the charge, which took effect three years ago. The city's amusement tax, which used to apply mostly to concert and sporting event tickets, was extended to include streaming services in 2015. That includes charges paid for playing games, according to Chicago's Finance Department. Some tech companies have fought the additional 9 percent charge. Apple filed a lawsuit against the city in August alleging the tax on its music streaming services was illegal and discriminatory. That suit is pending in Cook County Circuit Court. Meanwhile, Apple is not collecting the tax. In 2015, a group of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, XBox Live and Hulu users sued Chicago in Cook County, alleging the tax violates federal law. The judge ruled in the city's favor in May, and the streaming service users appealed the decision. The case is pending in state Appellate Court.

Comments

Could try.....

[svendsen]

Lowering spending and face the fact your pension system was created of false hopes and unicorn dreams. The pension system is one of Chicago's biggest drains and if not dealt with will basically require never ending tax raises until it collapses anyway. The promise of the pension (based on nothing ore than magical wishing and crossing fingers of an ever growing population/economy) is no longer valid and sustainable.

Either slash the pensions to nothing (and yes that hurts people on it) to try to give the current people an economic chance or keep raising taxes (which also hurts people) until those who have money and/or mobile decide to simply leave making the situation worse (which based on numbers of people leaving being greater than those coming in seems to be their choice).

The good old Sin Tax.

[jellomizer]

Just like taxes on Gasoline, Cigarettes, Alcohol and Gambling. This is just an other Sin tax, where we are taxing people for products that are deemed by society to be bad for it, but is too popular to ban.

The issue is, the Tax will raise the price of the product, but demand will not be affected by an amount, so it is just free money to the City. And if people just stop using such services, there isn't going to be a public outcry because they don't need it.

Ah good 'ole regressive taxation

[rsilvergun]

That's when you structure your taxes to disproportionately affect the poor and working class because your elected reps won't raise taxes on their wealthy donors. Another good example is flat alcohol taxes. You'll pay the same tax on that 50 cent can of Pabst Blue Ribbon that your CEO pays on his $3000 bottle of Chateau de something-or-other.

As an added bonus these taxes piss off working class people who then demand tax cuts. You then give tax cuts to billionaire elites and when there's the inevitable budget shortfall create another batch of regressive taxes, which cause the working class to demand more tax cuts which leads to more of them for the rich which leads to more regressive taxes to make up the difference which.... well you get the idea.

Anyway there's a really easy solution to all this: Stop voting for people who accept corporate PAC money. Make it a deal breaker for any politician in your primary. Oh, and vote in your primary election.

Here's an entire wing of the Dems that won't take corp PAC money. If anyone knows the GOP equivalent please post it, I've been looking for it. If there's any issue that needs to be bipartisan it's this.

Re:Wrong name

[lgw]

But people living in Chicago voted for the politicians that did this.

That's not how the Chicago political machine works, or has ever worked. Quoth Wikipedia:

Chicago has a long history of political corruption,[11] dating to the incorporation of the city in 1833.[12] It has been a de facto monolithic entity of the Democratic Party from the mid 20th century onward.[13][14] Research released by the University of Illinois at Chicago reports that Chicago and Cook County's judicial district recorded 45 public corruption convictions for 2013, and 1642 convictions since 1976, when the Department of Justice began compiling statistics. This prompted many media outlets to declare Chicago the "corruption capital of America".[15] Gradel and Simpson's Corrupt Illinois (2015) provides the data behind Chicago's corrupt political culture.[16][17] They found that a tabulation of federal public corruption convictions make Chicago "undoubtedly the most corrupt city in our nation",[18] with the cost of corruption "at least" $500 million per year.[19]

Re:Wrong name

[liquid_schwartz]

I've always wondered how Obama managed to thrive in the Chicago political environment, rising through the ranks in Chicago from community organizer, to the State Senate (representing Chicago), then to the US Senate (and then of course on to President) and remain so squeaky clean.

He wasn't squeaky clean, the media protected him immensely. Negative things like his pastor being a racist, his pics with Louis Farrakhan, IRS targeting political opponents, and other scandals were brushed aside or buried. If the media had an axe to grind with him the way they did with either the president before or after him he would look less capable than Carter.

citations

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/... https://www.azquotes.com/autho... https://www.naturalnews.com/04...