Plan would tax porn, not corn

[mongo]

Plan would tax porn, not corn
Campfield plan makes adult businesses pay, drops state's grocery levy

By TOM HUMPHREY AND BRAD WILLIAMS, [e-mail]; [e-mail]
January 18, 2007

NASHVILLE - State Rep. Stacey Campfield said Wednesday he will introduce legislation this year to impose a tax on pornography, dedicating the revenue toward eliminating the state sales tax on groceries.

Some people questioned about the proposal, including Gov. Phil Bredesen, said it may be unconstitutional.

Campfield, R-Knoxville, said the proposed tax would apply - at the least - to sexually oriented materials that legally cannot be sold to persons under age 18. This would cover videos, books, magazines and sexual devices, he said.

Movies with an "R" rating or lower would not be taxed, but those with an X rating would, he said.

more -> http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/state/article/0,1406,KNS_348_5286924,00.html

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Of course, the plan is unconstitutional. You can't have a tax based on the CONTENT of speech, which is what this tax would be.

[baldguy]

1. Food is not a luxury item, porn is.

[northzax]

3. I think Mongo's point

is that you can tax, say, movies, or magazines, but not certain types of movies and magazines only. This is a tax based on content, wherefrom comes the problem.

[Warpy]

4. Agreed, he's right about this one

Porn never did a thing for me, but I've always tolerated it as a price those of us who are turned off by it pay for freedom of speech and expression.

If they want to make economic justice revenue neutral, they need to look at the progressive tax structure again.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. I don't know -- porn is a form of entertainment, as is gambling,

and gambling can be specially taxed as that form of entertainment, can't it?

I see the real problem in being how to define 'porn'. How would the state set a bar between porn and merely grown-up entertainment? A lot of R rated movies are considered porn by certain segments of the population because of casual nudity - would that segment demand the tax on those movies?

Some very murky waters to wade into.

[Yavin4]

10. Gambling Does Not Have First Amendment Protection

Porn does.

[the other one]

15. If you can age-restrict content, why can't you tax it?

If you can't discriminate against types of content, doesn't the movie rating system go out the window?

[northzax]

18. the movie rating system is voluntary

you don't need to go through the process to make a movie, and you don't need to go through it to show a movie. It is simply custom (designed to stop government interference, which would be unconsitutional anyway)

[mongo]

21. Yes and No

True, you can't have prior restraint on speech, but there are laws in all 50 states against dismeninating material "harmful to minors".

But to comment on the post you are responding to, banning or taxing something is quite different than having the government regulate what is appropriate for minors.

[Boojatta]

27. Does the determination of whether not reading materials are "harmful to minors"

require experimental tests of the effects on emotionally immature adults? Is the determination based on armchair philosophizing by people who have studied the materials?

[Yavin4]

20. Age-Restricting Does Not Equate To Taxing

Most of our constitutional rights can be age restricted, voting, owning a gun, etc. However, when it comes to taxing, government infringes on free speech. Also, how does one define porn? Is it only sexual content? What about porn that's non-explicit? What about explicit sex scenes in mainstream movies? Where do you draw the tax line, and who draws the line?

[Boojatta]

12. How about an exemption from the tax for porn that consists of just

letters of the alphabet, numerals, and punctuation symbols? In that case, cookbooks that contain pictures of food would be exempt on the grounds that they are not porn. Writing that is about things that are pornographic would be exempt, provided that it contains no pictures and no diagrams.

[northzax]

16. images are covered by the First Amendment

not just text.

[Boojatta]

22. Do people under the age of 18 have first amendment rights as

not just content creators, but content viewers? If they do have first-amendment rights as content viewers, then what is the legal basis for the "No Children Under 17 Admitted" rating of some movies and the "No Children Under 18 Admitted" rating for the ultra-raunchy California GED test?

[northzax]

26. nope

minors do not have full constitutional rights. reaffirmed over and over again.

[northzax]

2. waht is mr. campfeld saying about his state?

that people spend as much on pornography as on groceries?

and isn't tennessee the state that banned 3-d sexual devices the other year, or was that Kentucky?

[Lance_Boyle]

5. Nashville

is among the American cities with the most adult-oriented businesses per capita. An odd juxtaposition with it's self-selected nickname of "Steeple City."

Mongo is correct that the proposed tax would be content-based, therefore unconstitutional. I suspect the TN legislature will pass it anyway, resulting in court battles that cost the state much more than the proposed tax will take in.

[northzax]

6. I have long suspected

a strong correlation between the number of churches in a city and the amount of pornography sold there. I bet there is a good one between churches and prostitution as well.

[Warpy]

11. Charlotte, NC, back in the 60s

boasted about the number of churches it had per capita, with tent revivals occurring weekly in various parts of the city in warm weather months.

It also had the first topless bar outside Las Vegas and the local major network stations ran soft core porn movies late on Saturday nights.

I think you've got a point. Repression leads to an insatiable appetite for what's being repressed plus a need to try to satisfy that appetite by secondary means.

In other words, when Jesus tells you not to screw, you look at dirty pictures/strippers/blue movies and jack off.

[mongo]

7. As I recall

10 states have "obscene device" laws.

[MindPilot]

14. Is a Hummer considered an "obscene device"?

[mongo]

19. LOL!

[Ian David]

9. "The" Christian Bible(s) is/are the only book/s that is/are sold tax-free

If they pass this law, and it goes to court and loses, then they may have to start taxing bibles.

1) You can't tax material based on its content.
2) Therefore you can't have a porn tax.
3) Therefore you also can't exempt "The" Bible from sales taxes.

[Boojatta]

13. What if a company sells what is basically a pad of blank paper

(say 8 1/2 by 11) consisting of a hundred leaves, but at the bottom of one side of each leaf there is a very short quotation and all the quotations are different. Would such a pad be exempt from taxes on the grounds that it includes some content?

[hughee99]

28. I don't think that's what "taxing based on content" is referring to...

For example, if there were two different basically blank pads, one said "Have a nice day" at the bottom, and the other said "Go F' yourself" at the bottom, you could certainly tax them, or you could choose not to tax them, but you couldn't discriminate based on the content. You couldn't tax "Go F' yourself" at twice the rate of "Have a nice day" just because of what it said.

[depakid]

17. How about taxing country music?

That would bring in much more revenue- and provide a public service. :evilgrin:

[fidgeting wildly]

23. This guy hasn't done his homework.

Funny... The MPAA doesn't use the X rating anymore. It uses NC-17 for films that it deems too strong for the R rating. The MPAA ratings (R, PG-13, etc.) are trademarked, but X is not, which means that the X rating is being used voluntarily by the porn industry itself. In terms of enforcing any regulations, the rating is meaningless. All the distributors would have to do, at least in the case of films, is to stop using the rating and distribute their videos as "unrated."

[Sapere aude]

24. How are you going to tax the porn on cable and satellite and everything that is prohibited to those

under 18 is not porn.

I think it is elitist to want to do this. Sin tax never got much support from me. If the benefit is for everyone then the tax should be charged to everyone. Why force a certain group of folks to pay for the benefit of all just because you don't approve of their behavior? If that is the case, I want to tax church goers and bibles and preachers to replace my food tax. Food is not a luxury, religion is.

[Kagemusha]

25. In the first place it isn't a government rating system.

And if it was, that in itself would likely be unconstitutional. But we'll never get to that point, because you can't logically tax based on a voluntary, privately managed ratings system. It's delegating state taxation and administration powers to the private sector.