Chicago Now Taxes Netflix And Other Cloud-Based Services

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Chicago is taxing cloud-based services now? Seriously? Is nothing sacred?

Chicagoans who pay to stream movies and music from services like Netflix and Spotify will now need to fork over an additional 9 percent for the privilege, as will Chicago businesses that pay to use everything from real estate to court databases online, under a decision the city quietly made recently to expand its taxing power.
 
Don't be surprised if some genius in Chicago came up with an idea to tax you for breathing.
 
I don't even know what to say about this.
 
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
 
no surprise here. they tax what you make and they tax what you spend.
 
You better be quiet Steve or you'll be wearing concrete tennis shoes. Capiche?
 
Nice trial balloon in a state which will reinforce its validity to its highest level
 
Makes you wonder if Chicago is just running a murder for hire business, and they need more taxes to pay the hitmen. They had 419 homicides last year IIRC.
 
I lived in Chicago for 8 years.

One of the craziest things I saw there was a "city automobile tax".

Illinois had no annual car inspection like most states, but you had to pay a tax if you owned a car in the city limits of Chicago.
It had nothing to do with nothing......the biggest piece of shit on the planet was allowed on the street as long as it had a tax sticker.

My question is how do you enforce this?
Is Netflix or Amazon going to collect the tax?
The ISP?

I mean really......is the next step taxing OTA television?

This is just unbelievable.:rolleyes:
 
People are going to learn how to VPN in Chicago.
 
Contrary to popular belief, organized crime in Chicago was NEVER stamped out.

The crooks just moved into city government. The opportunities for graft, theft, and general miscreantry were just orders of magnitude more lucrative than running booze (especially when booze was legalized again).
 
Not sure how this is legal. Can anything from the Net Neutrality bill get pulled into stopping this? Not sure who is most familiar with the wordings of the bill on this forum but I would love to hear their input.
 
It'd be hilarious if companies like Netflix just said "fuck you!" to anyone in Chicago so that the government could deal with the pissed off people, but that'll never happen.
 
Contrary to popular belief, organized crime in Chicago was NEVER stamped out.
Yup, I think it all started with the mafia and the prohibition, then they went into gambling, then into unions, and finally just into government to run the show.
 
What always bothers me about these taxes is the intention behind them.

They say they are taxing the services. But the services aren't the ones sitting there taking it on the chin. They just say "Hmm ok well time to raise our prices 9% to account for it" so in the end it is us who really bares the brunt of the tax. The common folk.

I would love to be able to walk into work tomorrow and say "Yeah, so I want this new car, I'm going to have to go and require you pay me 7% more per year. KTHXBYE".

So my original question was do they understand that this is really just a tax on everyday people or do they just not give a rat's ass. Nevermind I think I answered my own question.
 
What is the rationale here? :confused:

Taxation at the municipal level is usually justified based on the cost you introduce to the locality.

For example, if you run a delivery company, you wear roads that need to be repaired. If you own a house you live there and as such should pay for the services the locality provides to residents...

How on earth do cloud services incur any additional cost on the city?

This is moronic.
 
So is this an additional tax on Netflix then ... my Netflix monthly fees have always had tax added, when I lived in Texas and now that I live in New Mexico (the New Mexico rate is slightly lower so they charge a few pennies less tax) ... Is Chicago adding onto this existing tax for Chicago residents?
 
What always bothers me about these taxes is the intention behind them.

They say they are taxing the services. But the services aren't the ones sitting there taking it on the chin. They just say "Hmm ok well time to raise our prices 9% to account for it" so in the end it is us who really bares the brunt of the tax. The common folk.

This isn't necessarily the case (though businesses would like you to believe it is).

Businesses (at least the smart ones who want to stay in business) don't charge their customers based on the costs plus a profit margin. You can't do business like that.

They charge their customers based on what the competition is charging and based on what the market will bear.

Just because their costs go up (due to taxation) doesn't necessarily mean that their customer base is willing to pay more, so if they raise prices to compensate for taxation, they may end up losing customers, so they still have to tread lightly and figure out if it is worth it for them.

So yes, long term a portion of this taxation still winds up impacting the consumer, but its not a linear scale like you think, where any taxation increase comes straight out of the pocket of the consumer.
 
the rational? while i do not agree with it, but it is simple:

money. charging a tax- now is it 9% a month? 9% a movie? a show? what if you do not use the service for a month, do you still get that ~dollar tax on your bill? you did not USE the service, thus TECHNICALLY you shouldn't have to pay.

how are they going to enforce it? i mean what is to stop someone from setting up a mailbox in a suburb of chicago changing their address to xxx east broadway east buford illinois 55555 on netflix's contact page, since TECHNICALLY your official address would be your PO BOX TECHNICALLY how would netflix know to charge you the chicago rate- you can access netflix account from anywhere in the usa basically.... i am on vacation, i go on a month long vaca to say fla or etc. and use netflix, not using the chicago broadband, i am using the FLA...one could argue that techincally, not in chicago= no tax.

conversely, you live in another state and are on vacation in chicago...do you get charged a 9% fee to use netflix while on vacation in said chicago?


netflix hulu and amazon account for something like 60% or MORE of the bandwidth in the usa during primetime hrs.

netflix hulu etc are going to sue and win.
 
lol so i just read that Chicago laid off 1400 people and borrowed some money to make a 600$ million payment to the Teachers pension fund.. and then the next day asked the pension fund for a 500$ million loan. /facepalm.
 
Every time someone says, "Tax the rich!", this is what happens so some need to STFU.
 
What gets me is the City of Chicago is doing NOTHING to improve the delivery or quality of the services that are being taxed.

Paying Chicago 9% for using a service they don't provide in any way is just bizarre.

That and they are going to put it on the provider of the service to collect the money.
 
What gets me is the City of Chicago is doing NOTHING to improve the delivery or quality of the services that are being taxed.

Paying Chicago 9% for using a service they don't provide in any way is just bizarre.

That and they are going to put it on the provider of the service to collect the money.

Although I agree that having the city tax it is extreme (since it appears additive so their effective tax on Netflix could rise to 17% or higher) Netflix has been taxed for awhile (at least in the States I have lived) ... I went ahead and did the math on my previous bills ... when I was living in Plano, Texas the tax on my Netflix bill was about 8.3% every month ... now that I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico that tax has dropped to 7.9% ... I would assume that Illinois residents are already paying a similar tax (or higher) so if Chicago adds an additional 9% tax on top of the other taxes then it will definitely impact people's bills
 
I'm not the least bit surprised. The fault lies with the residents. Congratulations to all the citizens that voted for their pro-big-government (mostly democrat) overlords.
 
but who will build the roads?



Just kidding. Get fucked, Chicago.
 
Congratulations to all the citizens that voted for their pro-big-government (mostly democrat) overlords.

obama%20dance.gif
 
What gets me is the City of Chicago is doing NOTHING to improve the delivery or quality of the services that are being taxed.

Paying Chicago 9% for using a service they don't provide in any way is just bizarre.

That and they are going to put it on the provider of the service to collect the money.

Exactly! And they're trying to claim it's so they can draw some sort of tax parity with brick and mortar stores.

Uh? WHAT?

This is a online service model with NO analog in brick and mortar. Yes, the DVD rental is analogous to various B&M rental chains. But the streaming service?

Are they going to start taxing us for listening to broadcast radio?

Fucking dopes.
 
I'm not the least bit surprised. The fault lies with the residents. Congratulations to all the citizens that voted for their pro-big-government (mostly democrat) overlords.

"Mostly"

There has not been a republican mayor in Chicago since 1927, and the city council has had one republican member in the last 20 years.

Not that republicans are any better, but the mess that is Chicago rests solely on the democrats.
 
Put down the pitchforks people

Companies that deliver cloud-based services will be responsible for collecting taxes from their Chicago customers
How many cloud based services are actually going to give a fuck what one city wants? How many cloud based services are going to go through the trouble of checking IP addresses to see if they correspond to a Chicago based address? No one is going to pay a tax on this.
 
Exactly! And they're trying to claim it's so they can draw some sort of tax parity with brick and mortar stores.

Uh? WHAT?

This is a online service model with NO analog in brick and mortar. Yes, the DVD rental is analogous to various B&M rental chains. But the streaming service?

Are they going to start taxing us for listening to broadcast radio?

Fucking dopes.

Note that the unusual part is for a city to tax the service ... my Netflix has been taxed for years in Texas and is also taxed in New Mexico (not sure if all States tax Netflix since those are the only two I have lived in) ... for a city to do it (if the State is already taxing it) would be very problematic as it would raise the Netflix tax to close to 20% or more

Just out of curiosity, did anyone else check their Netflix bill to see if they were paying taxes on it in their States?
 
What gets me is the City of Chicago is doing NOTHING to improve the delivery or quality of the services that are being taxed.

they cannot because they need to pay for other things they couldn't afford when they had already promised. the new taxes are to help pay for that.
 
"Mostly"

There has not been a republican mayor in Chicago since 1927, and the city council has had one republican member in the last 20 years.

Not that republicans are any better, but the mess that is Chicago rests solely on the democrats.

It's a little less black and white as democrat vs republican though, this is something the leaders of Chicago are to blame for, and actually it seems from the article that the finance department made this ruling which is odd, sounds more like an increase in the scope of existing laws. While yeah those leaders are democrats, this is a local thing, how many republicans praised everything Arnold did in California? How many republicans applaud all the taxes for amusement (mostly tourist tax) in Florida? How many other cities in Illinois are trying to tax Netflix? Yeah this is a Chicago going full retard thing, not a democrat thing.
 
they cannot because they need to pay for other things they couldn't afford when they had already promised. the new taxes are to help pay for that.
Or they can not because they do not own anything between point A and point B that gets a resident his netflix fix
 
Back
Top