Posted on 07/01/2015 5:26:51 PM PDT by lowbridge
Chicago officials are taking an aggressive new tax approach. Consumers will now have to pay 9% on Netflix, Amazon Web Services and more.
Chicago is marking Independence Day this year with fireworks, hot dogs – and sweeping new tax rules that require companies to collect a 9% levy every time consumers use streaming and cloud services such as Netflix or Amazon Web Services.
The rules, which went into effect today, came about after city officials expanded the interpretation of existing amusement and property lease taxes to encompass cloud-based technologies.
According to lawyers at ReedSmith, which flagged the new rules in a blog post, the taxes now encompass SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and streaming media services. In a phone interview, Wynne described how the tax collection will work in practice:
“It really comes from doing audits of consumers. Take our law firm. City officials will audit us for a bunch of taxes, and may find online services,” said Wynne, explaining that officials will now check if the firm has been paying the 9 percent tax on those services.
This raises the question of who is responsible for collecting and paying the tax, which is technically levied on consumers.
“Let’s say an audit of our firm reveals we an invoice from Amazon or someone else with a Chicago address,” said Wynne in a hypothetical example. “The city authority has the choice of either going after the law firm or the companies who didn’t collect.”
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
“I see you have some money there. Give it to me.”
They need that money to placate the foreign invaders so they vote Democrap which is why Independence day is now Dependence day.
Will it ever end?
.
If they levy a tax on each program I watch, I won’t be watching any programs.
What a moronic load of...
Use the money to pay the teachers so they can claim it’s for the chillrun
I guess they never heard of a VPN in Chicago....
They really want to kill Chicago, don’t they?
I thought Chicago was known for homicides, not suicide : )
LOL, I’d sure hate to have to use one to watch Netflix and HULU.
What do we expect for a communists liberal city like Chicago.
“I guess they never heard of a VPN in Chicago....”
exactly. Even HBO and netflix canada subscribers use VPN to access the real US shows.
If local video rental stores have to pay this tax, it is reasonable for Netflix to have to pay it as well. Otherwise, this is simply discrimination amongst various types of businesses.
I use it in Saudi.
I can’t believe HULU and Netflix can provide the programming they do based on the $7.99/mo model.
Netflix in particular intrigues me because their advertising is minimalist compared to HULU.
So here the government jumps in with both feet to piggy back their success.
Just nutty.
nice :)
Netflix monthly already collects taxes. My $7.99 charge ends up being $8.75 on my VISA. Thus, about $0.76 of my monthly charge is already going to taxes.
Then, the cable Internet charges more taxes for Internet and TV.
I wonder how Chicago assesses the value of a video stream in order to assess the 9%.
It would seem that the 9% tax idea has not been thought through. It would be open to a slew of lawsuits.
I have Netflix, and love it.
I have:
Netflix
HULU
& Amazon
For less than $25 a month I can always find some good value on one of them.
Showtime is coming to HULU this month. You can supposedly view anything Showtime has to offer. Frankly, their own programming doesn’t appeal to me at all. It’s disgusting.
I do think I’ll enjoy the access to a larger movie database.
Yes. Eventually it self-immolates. And we’re getting close to seeing that here. Cf Greece
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