Dear whoever thought this was a good idea, Do you know what else has no tax? Piracy.
Don't give them any ideas. I'm sure they'd try to tax torrents if they could.
“Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
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Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#42I see a lot of comments here in shock and disbelief. In the spirit of at least trying to consider the most charitable view if the events I would like to offer my justification for what happens. Municipalities tax consumption on their territory. By contrast, the federal government taxes income and/or profit. The individual states tax one or the other or both. This division has to do, in part, with practicality of admi…
A consumer is already paying tax on the "utility" be it cable or wireless, its a line item on your cable/wireless bill. This tax is in addition to other regulatory fees local governments also collect from each subscriber. Why should the consumer also be taxed on the bits they move through that pipe they've already paid tax on?
Great question.
The distinction I'm trying to make is between taxing a stream of bits and taxing a stream of dollars.
Similarly, municipalities are not taxing the weight of the items purchased at the store, but their monetary value.
Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#43If this is the best answer the cable company lobby could come up with, Netflix has already won.
In the USA maybe, in the rest of the world Netflix is a joke.
I'm pretty happy with it here in Canada. I know we have far less content than the american version of netflix, but it's still the best streaming service available (and a decent competitor to piracy)
Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#44Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#45How do people so clueless end up in a public office that can even make a decision like this?
Which bit do you find clueless. Finding a way to use an obscure law about cell phones to tax people on their streaming services hardly seems clueless to me (I doubt I would have thought of it), in fact it's kind of inspired in a twisted sort of way.
It's the difference between knowing what you can do, and knowing what you should do.
Who ever came up with this is very clever in finding a loophole, and completely clueless in thinking that it's even marginally acceptable to try and exploit said loophole.
Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#469.4% tax on $8 a month is around 75 cents. People will complain about anything.
people are complaining about this utterly useless tax because it shows that the city just plans on getting away with it. And other cities are going to follow. and the tax will eventually go up again. and again...
Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#47> They’re calling it a utility, so it can be taxed like water and electricity. Curious how it's not a utility when we start talking about regulating who provides Internet service and under what terms, but then it is one when they want to tax your use of it.
"it" in the article is Netflix (generally, video streaming). It sounds like you're talking about internet service. It seems perfectly reasonable to call one of those a utility and one not.
It doesn't seem reasonable to call Netflix a utility but not Internet service, though.
Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#48A municipal tax on cable TV can be enforced because there's a physical line to a residence in the municipality. What's stopping users from ordering netflix to an "address" in a tax-free municipality? For that matter, how are they determining this in the first place? I never told netflix where I live; they only have a billing address. But billing addresses aren't where tax is due; I regularly pay municipally taxed ser…
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Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#49A municipal tax on cable TV can be enforced because there's a physical line to a residence in the municipality. What's stopping users from ordering netflix to an "address" in a tax-free municipality? For that matter, how are they determining this in the first place? I never told netflix where I live; they only have a billing address. But billing addresses aren't where tax is due; I regularly pay municipally taxed ser…
NetFlix offers gift cards, so you don't even have to worry about a real address if you don't want to.
Re: “Netflix tax” may be coming soon to your bill
#50Dear whoever thought this was a good idea, Do you know what else has no tax? Piracy.
Don't give them any ideas. I'm sure they'd try to tax torrents if they could.
That wasn't quite my point, but I know what you're getting at. I just meant it in a more "people are probably just gonna go back to piracy if you start taxing them on things they expect to not be taxed on" kinda way.