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January 02, 2008

Tax Incentives.

So, a Wisconsin lawmaker wants to help shore up the juvenile court system. Worthy goal. Unfortunately, he's trying to do this by placing a tax on art. Not a luxury tax, mind, but a tax on mass-cultural pop art:

"The idea being that this is kind of a kids-kids thing, in other words, if we're going to do this for kids maybe this would be a good way to go about it. And if it's not the best way, I'm open to any other way."

The tax would apply to video games, and would be rather small-- only 1%. I'm a bit torn. The legislator is demographically wrong-- Games are played mostly by adults. It also seems bizarre to tax art in just about any form. And yet...

An extra 50 cents on a US$50 game seems like a small enough price for a rather important goal. So... thoughts?

via

Posted by Andrew at January 2, 2008 08:57 AM

Comments

This is essentially a sin tax: a tax placed on something society has deemed to be unwholesome as a mild disincentive to doing it.

So it's the same basic problem as "Let's tax cigarettes to pay for health care.":

You can tax something to discourage people from doing it.

You can tax something because you need the money.

You can't do both at the same time. If you succeed at the former, you prevent the latter. It's dishonest in the way that speed traps are dishonest: "Ostensibly, we want you not to speed because it's dangerous. But secretly, we *do* want you to speed, because we make all our money from ticketing you").

And, of course, the whole "Let's tax those newfangled heathen and devil video game things on the intertubes" really grates me.

Though I reserve the right to say "Why do you hate our children?" the next time someone challenges me on my video game spending habits.

Posted by: Ross [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 2, 2008 02:11 PM

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