Sure it’s hard to close a $15.4 billion budget gap but New York Governor Patterson seems to think that it’s time for digital downloaders to start paying their fair share of taxes . As part of his slash and burn budget Patterson wants to start taxing the sale of downloaded music and other digitally delivered entertainment services . This iPod tax is among the many small tax increases being proposed as a way to fill the shortage in budget money.
Among the other proposals are the following
Movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, wine, cigars and massages would be taxed under Paterson’s proposal. It also extends sales taxes to cable and satellite TV services and removes the tax exemption for clothes costing less than $110.
This follows on the footsteps of the recent move to collect sales taxes from online retailers in New York; which went over like a lead balloon. I realize that New York has to find some way to make up their short falls but I don’t see how nickel and diming residents by taxing all their entertainment downloads is going to help.
If anything I figure we will see more lawsuits like the one Amazon launched against the sales tax move by the state. Not to mention the fact that people will just shift their buying to sites that don’t tax their purchase on behalf of a state government.
