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

Wrong name

[nospam007]

Because Chicago users are not amused about 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

[Dan East]

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.

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.

Re:The good old Sin Tax.

[mjwx]

Just like taxes on Gasoline, Cigarettes, Alcohol and Gambling. This is just an other Sin tax

Petrol is a sin? When did this happen. I cant remember the part of the bible that said, "Thou shalt not engineer the combustion of internals".

The word you're looking for is "soft target". Gamers will not garner any sympathy from the majority, same as smokers, drinkers, gamblers and drivers. This makes it a soft target, not a sin.

Sin taxes refer explicitly to vices, drinking, smoking, gambling, pornography and the like.

The thing is, going after soft targets almost never gets as much cash as they hope for, in fact they rarely generate enough money to justify their existence like the "soft drink tax" here in the UK.

lol

[cascadingstylesheet]

Young gamers look up from screen ...

"Hey, I thought socialism meant that other people paid more. WTF???"

Shouldn't that depend on the game you buy?

[SuperKendall]

There have been a number of games I've bought in the past that brought no amusement whatsoever.

I'm thinking something like a tax refund if the game you buy gets below 50% on Metacritic.

Voracious

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

You voted for it! You encourage voracious government for massive spending, as Shakespeare might have said, "As you like it!"

Times are better than ever before. Government spending should be shrinking. Yet it grows.

It's almost as if it has nothing to do with need and everything to do with buying votes!