Alright You Dirty Blogger, Pay Up!

Philadelphia bought the Internet? Who knew?

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Gerald R. Ford said:

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

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I wonder how they handle a writer that has a website to advertise his/her book and also sells from that website via direct or by a link to another website.

I understand the business privilege fee, but the writer is then going to have the burden of proof to show where their sales came from, the publishers site, their site, or amazon's site.

Creative financing, you got to love the American way...

Yup. That's some crap.

I wonder how they handle a writer that has a website to advertise his/her book and also sells from that website via direct

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In this case the writer would probably need a business license and a sales ID tax number in order to sell the books. At least in NY, anyway.

Looks like I'm alone on this one, but I see nothing wrong with the license fee. If a blogger is blogging simply as a hobby then she should remove all advertising from the site. Problem solved.

On the business license and tax ID number, I understand and agree, but this blogging issue sounds like a separate fee piled onto of the business license in Philly.

As far as advertising, sometimes its not the blogger making any money off the advertising but the free site they blog on.

As far as advertising, sometimes its not the blogger making any money off the advertising but the free site they blog on.

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In that case the blogger has nothing to worry about because she won't have to claim income.

but this blogging issue sounds like a separate fee piled onto of the business license in Philly.

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If I understand the article correctly, the fee isn't for blogging alone. It's for bloggers who make money from the site. As a compromise maybe there should be a threshold...when a blogger makes X annually then they have to apply for a license.

I had to have a business license in California, from the city. Part of the reason was that the city figured customers would be using city resources (water, parking, etc.) but I talked them out of the initial thousands to under a thousand by documenting that I did not have "clients" visiting, that all my business was conducted via the Internet.

I note, however, that they charged friends of mine employed at UCLA and at the local community college because they did grading at home, and worked on text book mss. from home.

So yeah, not exactly fair.

Fullback said:

What did the government do to warrant getting a fee or a percent?ing from your sites. If you don't, I'll fine and/or imprison you. OK?

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The streets. The cops that protect the streets--so I can walk home at night, safely. The municipal water and sewer system. The public library where I do my research.

Fullback said:

Your blog creates an incremental increase in your water use and evening strolls in the ghetto with an escort of police in tow?

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A blog that makes money is a business, and does use a few resources. The question is, how to take that into account in some kind of proportional way. But the proportion, in the long run, is not zero.

It just seems to me that they should be happy with taxing the resulting income.

Don't they do that as well? Usually "license fees" are just there to cover the costs of registering a business and other assorted bureaucracy. For most businesses a one-time 300$ fee wouldn't even really mattered, while the income taxes do.
The ridiculous part is not so much that practice, but calling a blog that makes 11$ profit a year a "business".
Of course, it could also be a pretty convenient way of getting back at people who blogged unkind things about the city council.

Any city code that says a blog that makes a pittance a "business" says something fairly awful about the city council. The two examples in the article show that bloggers aren't out there raking it in. Maybe there are some, but if the fee to blog ($300) is more than one makes back ($11 in one case, $50 in the other), all I can see is a deep inability to exercise common sense.

Um, a huge polluting business with rampant foot traffic can still run at a loss or make very little money.

Yes they need to scale the fee and there is a point at which it will become zero. but 'being online' or 'not making much money' is not enough to make a judgement.

A blog isn't going to get a lot of foot traffic. If it does, there's a problem.

I'm sorry but I fail to see why people don't just leave town and go somewhere else and do the same thing, so that they don't have to take a legally required $250.00 loss.

Everyone in this thread, including me, now owes the city of Philadelphia a "Complaint Fee."

Expect nasty letters and warrants for non-payment.

Only if you live there. Otherwise it's taxation without representation. We've had wars over that.

So it's ok to charge people for exercising their First Amendment right?

Free Speech now costs $300 in Philadelphia.

Of course, people already pay government for a license to say "I Love You," so this shouldn't be a big surprise, I guess.

Medievalist said:

The streets. The cops that protect the streets--so I can walk home at night, safely. The municipal water and sewer system. The public library where I do my research.

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That's what your property taxes and the city payroll tax charged on people who work in Philadelphia are used for (my girlfriend works in Philadelphia but lives in the burbs, still pays Philly payroll tax). No, this is just another obnoxious, extortionate government fee so typical of an era in which government entities are unable to balance their budgets through fiscal responsibility. Thus they stoop to imposing ludicrous surcharges on whatever they can think of in order to finance their frivolous spending. Philly recently tried to impose a tax on sugared soft drinks to raise money--as an incentive to save us from ourselves, of course--so this blogging fee is hardly a shock.

Don said:

Of course, people already pay government for a license to say "I Love You," so this shouldn't be a big surprise, I guess.

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It's not for "I Love You". Society no longer blinks and stares at "I Love You" without legal marriage anymore. It's for "I'm legal binding myself to you", though the reason for that binding might be love. People have the option of being religiously or community bound together and not pay a government fee. You can still have "I Love You" and the government doesn't really care.

I don't see that as the same thing as a city redefining what a business is as the same thing.


All this makes me glad that I live on the other side of the state, though.

DeleyanLee said:

All this makes me glad that I live on the other side of the state, though.

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Me, too. Too bad our gov is from Philly and this mindset. (Although where we can find any pol who's not finding new creative ways to finance the behemoth of our gov on all levels...I'm not sure. Might be a mythical creature at this point.)

Susan G.

Another "creative" financing

I just stumbled across another great example of new creative ways for gov to bring in $$.

Sliced bagels in NY state (and City.) If you buy a bagel unsliced, no tax. If it's sliced, tax. Even if you don't want anything on it, but want your bagels presliced. (Ooooo, I wonder if that applies to frozen bagels as well? A lot of those come presliced. I probably shouldn't point that out to the tax man, though.)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/ny_cut_of_bagel_dough_YEhNdwO7ZwlUO555GQ4rNN?sms_ss=facebook

Susan G.

Susan Gable said:

I just stumbled across another great example of new creative ways for gov to bring in $$.

Sliced bagels in NY state (and City.) If you buy a bagel unsliced, no tax. If it's sliced, tax. Even if you don't want anything on it, but want your bagels presliced. (Ooooo, I wonder if that applies to frozen bagels as well? A lot of those come presliced. I probably shouldn't point that out to the tax man, though.)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/ny_cut_of_bagel_dough_YEhNdwO7ZwlUO555GQ4rNN?sms_ss=facebook

Susan G.

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It's the difference between taxing prepared meals (at restaurants, etc), and not taxing foods you would prepare for yourself.

Some states get around such fine hair-splitting by just taxing everything.