Wisconsin Mulls an Earmarked Video Game Tax 63
Mearlus writes "A Wisconsin lawmaker is proposing a law to add an additional tax on video games and equipment in order to help cover the costs of moving 17-year-old criminals back into the juvenile system." (According to the article, 17-year-olds are at present treated as adults by Wisconsin courts.)
Re:Taxing the wrong thing... (Score:3, Informative)
Taxing things to pay for other things works when everyone uses that particular thing, or the revenue generated is 100% from the users of it (like a gas or cigarette tax) and non-users are not incidentally taxed as a result. (school taxes are _not_ among those because people with no children contribute to the system's coffers even though they do not use the schools...), but charging Video game taxes is particularly grasping at a revenue source (or potential revenue source) to fund a problem that is not of Video game's making. It forces people who do not have anything to do with the problem to pay for those who do (and frequently would not contribute to the tax itself, if you believe statistics.) I'm sure other taxes people pay in Wisconsin cover the expense in question, but like all political issues, it's never enough money... "new" fees and taxes are always preferable to raising existing ones.
A similar analogy would be to tax people who don't use gasoline a similar use-based tax for riding the bus (in spite of other taxes they pay, in addition to fees to ride pay for their minor use of the road that the state is missing because they don't have a car). It spreads "equity" if you consider being a resident the barometer. It does not, however, address the inequity of burden on the infrastructure.
I need a beer.