Chicago successfully taxes streaming services • Hacker News Board

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#21

Post by macspoofing » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

Hate it. There's nothing wrong with taxes, but this kind of tax is onerous. It adds a shit ton of overhead if you have to maintain tax rates for every municipality in US, or the world. This is where I wish government would figure something else out. Have one state or (preferably) federal agency levy one tax, and then figure out how to disperse the collected income to municipalities - instead of each municipality creating its own tax for specific online goods. It just sucks.

And by the way, big companies will figure it out because they have entire departments to deal with garbage like that. It's the small companies that suffer from this bureaucracy.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#22

Post by Phlarp » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #18

gfodor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises to those who sign up for such jobs and hence would likely greatly reduce the quantity and quality of recruits.

The current proposed solution is just to cut back benefits on new job offers - though obviously if they cut back too much no one decent will want to work there.

Because there is some glut of smart qualified people gunning for those public sector jobs?

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#23

Post by whack » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

Instead of trying to tax purely digital activities, why not just raise the income/property taxes on the people who live or work in your city? This would be a lot less regressive, and would prevent people from getting around it just by changing their credit card billing address. Not to mention the beauracratic nightmare of requiring SaaS companies to keep track of every customer's physical address and local tax regulations.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#24

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #16

Shivetya wrote: post #14

Chicago is in the hole for nearly thirty billion dollars. They have been floating the idea of a ten billion dollar bond with the debt structured in a way which lets current politicians escape the fallout from its payment and not having to raise property taxes. The state of Illinois is not well off either with debts estimated at the low of one hundred thirty billion to two hundred fifty billion. An Illinois proposal j…

Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises to those who sign up for such jobs and hence would likely greatly reduce the quantity and quality of recruits.

I would think quality recruits are already avoiding Illinois in general due to the future share of tax revenues that will need to be diverted to pay for prior years' labor, meaning less resources for today and the future's quality of life.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#25

Post by shittyadmin » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #5

This stuff makes sense for cities, it’s just frustrating how much more difficult it makes it to operate a “mom and pop” software business. The complexity of potentially complying with hundreds of state and municipal governments - not where you are located but where online purchases originate - is a pretty significant deterrent to setting up a small side business. Imagine if every food truck had to pay taxes based not…

You don't reside there, you're not liable to abide by their laws. I run a small US company, I don't have to comply with GDPR for example. Same applies here.

I don't see why any company would implement this, perhaps appeasing regulators at the federal level.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#26

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #20

gfodor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises to those who sign up for such jobs and hence would likely greatly reduce the quantity and quality of recruits.

Just pay them market rate and give them 401ks like everyone else - what am I missing? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves with government jobs?

> Why do we keep doing this to ourselves with government jobs?

Because the politician who agrees to the largess will be long gone before the bill comes due.

Not sure how to fix this, but generally I think some sort of additional checks and balances should be required whenever government takes on huge future liabilities.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#27

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #20

gfodor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises to those who sign up for such jobs and hence would likely greatly reduce the quantity and quality of recruits.

Just pay them market rate and give them 401ks like everyone else - what am I missing? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves with government jobs?

[deleted]

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#28

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #20

gfodor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling or cutting the pensions of retired public service workers (many of whom who risked their lives to protect the public) would, beyond the ethical questions, eliminate the credibility of the city's promises to those who sign up for such jobs and hence would likely greatly reduce the quantity and quality of recruits.

Just pay them market rate and give them 401ks like everyone else - what am I missing? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves with government jobs?

A lot of states do this. Florida Retirement System for public employees is mostly paid for through managed assets.

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#29

Post by OrgNet » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

just make Netflix (and all video streaming services) illegal and force them to distribute their content through the cable network (a bit like it is illegal to create city fiber networks) /s

Re: Chicago successfully taxes streaming services

#30

Post by ghaff » Sat, May 18, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

dontbenebby wrote: post #17

anamexis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Dakota v. Wayfair [1] last year overturned the requirement of a physical presence for a state to levy taxes. Most states with sales tax have since passed legislation to tax online purchases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc . edit: It seems as though HN's linkification drops trailing periods, so that link doesn't work when clicked.

Interesting. Is there a limit on what level of entity can do this? (Ex: in PA it feels like every two feet you're in a new township, then there's the county and state) I'm not necessarily anti-tax, but I don't envy a developer who needs to track down to the township level who taxes what in what way while providing goods across the entire USA.

IANAL but, as I understand it, the Supreme Court decision in South Dakota vs. Wayfairwas based on state laws that do not "unduly burden" interstate commerce. Kennedy's opinion cited adoption of "the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement. This system standardizes taxes to reduce administrative and compliance costs: It requires a single, state-level tax administration, uniform definitions of products and services, simplified tax rate structures, and other uniform rules." There is also a minimum sales threshold.

Tickets for local events are one thing. It's not clear to me that a city tax on a streaming service meets the tests that the Supreme Court said should be met.