Philadelphia places $300 "business privilege tax" on bloggers

[myp]

The city of Philadelphia is starting to regulate bloggers, including forcing them to buy a $300/year license to run a blog- even if they make no money off of it. The tax comes from another government that has tons of debt and in my opinion it is completely unjust and against the first amendment.

source: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news...Charged-300-for-Their-Thoughts-101302694.html

Thoughts?

 

[obtuseobserver]

how would they know that you are in their taxable jurisdiction and could you not find a way to make the city unable to find out?

 

[AK_ID]

I'd rather see them enact a $300 poll tax.

About the blogger tax, I'd imagine the city has some plan to track IP numbers?

 

[myp]

how would they know that you are in their taxable jurisdiction and could you not find a way to make the city unable to find out?

Oh I'm sure you could as you can with most taxes. The point is though that having such a tax is just absurd in my opinion.

I'd rather see them enact a $300 poll tax.

About the blogger tax, I'd imagine the city has some plan to track IP numbers?

I'm not sure how the city plans to track Phily bloggers, but I do know some big Phily-based blogs already got letters from the city.

 

[obtuseobserver]

Oh I'm sure you could as you can with most taxes. The point is though that having such a tax is just absurd in my opinion.

don't you know the interwebs are a series of big tubes?

they takes up space and needs to be taxeded

 

[David]

Wait, taxation on opinions? WTF?!

 

[obtuseobserver]

no no... not the opinions... the opinions are free... its the cost of maintaining the tubes man.... the tubes!!!

 

[AK_ID]

Wait, taxation on opinions? WTF?!

Yeah, imagine that.

(And please note that I'm enlarging my response because the original was under 35 characters in length.)

 

[dave]

how would they know that you are in their taxable jurisdiction and could you not find a way to make the city unable to find out?

Many blogs provide a service that involves the identification of the blogger. For example, some review restaurants in a particular city, or movies and other activities. Some blogs are devoted to specific cities.


What is the limit to this taxation? Bloggers are people that post their opinions on their own web page. Whats the difference between Facebook and a "blog"? Is everyone living in Philadelphia and with a Facebook page subject to this tax? Could I be a blogger if I post daily on this forum? Could this forum be considered a blog?

 

[omej]

how would they know that you are in their taxable jurisdiction and could you not find a way to make the city unable to find out?

Great question. Short of actively watching sniffing out every site you visit and what you are doing there (requires a warrant), there is no way to know if you are the guy blogging. I see this ridiculous rule going nowhere fast.

 

[AK_ID]

By that definition, all of us who post opinions are bloggers. Scary thought, eh?

Dave, not to be nosy, but what part of AK? I spent 19 years in Chugiak and then up towards Talkeetna.

 

[obtuseobserver]

Great question. Short of actively watching sniffing out every site you visit and what you are doing there (requires a warrant), there is no way to know if you are the guy blogging. I see this ridiculous rule going nowhere fast.

Being clueless and having thought that this was just a bunch of tubes....

How would agents do that search? Who's records would they need to look at to get that data?

Not sure a warrant would be required because the party being searched probably isn't the blogger. They probably could just get a subpoena for the records.

This seems like something that any government agency would completely screw up in an absurd and hopefully comical fashion.

 

[AK_ID]

Being clueless and having thought that this was just a bunch of tubes....

How would agents do that search? Who's records would they need to look at to get that data?

Not sure a warrant would be required because the party being searched probably isn't the blogger. They probably could just get a subpoena for the records.

This seems like something that any government agency would completely screw up in an absurd and hopefully comical fashion.

Yeah, I doubt a warrant would be needed, simply because a blog is by its very nature intended to be public fodder. It would make about as much sense to issue a warrant to the NYT to obtain yesterday morning's paper.

 

[obtuseobserver]

not sure what expectation of privacy exists on the net but anything published in an open forum available would obviously eliminate any reasonable expectation