How does a financially strapped city with a shrinking manufacturing base and rising unemployment attempt to make a little extra cash? Tax the bloggers. Philadelphia is demanding that bloggers pay $300 for a business license, whether or not the blog brings in a fraction of that amount in profit, according to the Philadelphia City Paper…. According to the city’s website, every individual, partnership, association and corporation engaged in a business, profession or other activity for profit within the city of Philadelphia must file a Business Privilege Tax Return. Whether the blog earns a profit does not matter.
Sure, I understand that in this down economy governments are scrambling to make up revenue shortfalls. But taxing free speech? Especially when my total intake over the past year has been…um, let me see…$0.00?? Most bloggers do it for reasons other than financial remuneration…because there’s frankly damn little money to be had. Oh, there are the fortunate few who manage to make a living, but let’s face it; blogging isn’t how you’re going to be putting your kid through Yale.
And then there’s the whole bad PR aspect. Surely, someone at Philadelphia’s City Hall must have realized that this would be treated as a joke…because it really is. The mere act of writing doesn’t mean that I’m “doing business”. If a Philadelphia blogger was accepting advertising, then the city might actually have a (very weak and virtually unsupportable) argument. Still, given that most bloggers don’t make $300 a year, the idea of being forced to purchase a $300 business license is beyond absurd. Something about not being able to get blood from a rock….
I wasn’t aware that exercising one’s free speech rights could also be defined for taxation purposes as “doing business”. If that’s the case, business (at least for me) is GOOD…but that still doesn’t mean that bloggers are actually making any money. And you wonder why I don’t want to live in Philadelphia….
To paraphrase the late, great Charlton Heston, “You can have my laptop when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to pray to the god Zyrtec for deliverance from mine allergies….
