Conservative lawmakers want porn taxes. Critics say they’re unconstitutional.

Half the country has enacted age-verification laws to prevent minors from viewing porn.

See full article...

 

[Madestjohn]

Just because the politicians jerked it only to then find out the person was nonbinary is not a cause for so much horror.

‘Only to then find out’? … who’s lying to themselves now?

 

[acefsw]

Playing devils advocate - wouldnt a tax on porn be like the tax I pay when I buy a book? Its not taxing the speech - its taxing the sale.

No because they want to tack another tax on top that tax because it contains porn. Therefore the law is not treating all speech equally. So, a lesser tax would paid for the book, "Why I Am a Hypocritical Xtian" while Hugh Hefner's illustrated book "My Favorite Playmates In The Raw" would be taxed at a higher rate and thus the other book would be receiving preferential treatment.

 

[acefsw]

Playing devils advocate - wouldnt a tax on porn be like the tax I pay when I buy a book? Its not taxing the speech - its taxing the sale.

edit: unless they are charging both sales tax and then also porn sales tax on top of that?

The whole article is about them wanting impose an extra tax on porn.

 

[Asbestos Muffins]

we the public were not even consulted on the age verification laws. there's been several high profile hacks and we're told by our lawmakers we need to hand over our licenses to these companies

 

[Focher]

Good idea. Make it a tariff so that the porn actors pay it.

 

[graylshaped]

Taxes on unrealized gains already exist. They're called property tax. The difference is property tax primarily hits the middle class, for whom housing will usually amount to one of their largest investments.

All Democrats want to do is extend this to other assets, so billionaires can't hide their wealth where it's effectively untouchable.

Yes, but with a caveat.

As a Democrat with a more moderate fiscal philosophy, my perspective is that the current proposals, and that includes the pending billionaire tax in my home state of California, are ill-conceived. Physical property is a reasonable proxy to assess costs for land and related physical assets to maintain infrastructure i a community. Taxing investment holdings ignores the value produced by the investment, and a state-by-state approach is pointless; other states are always happy to let the federal government or more productive states cover their costs rather than tax their own residents, as we see with the Google royalty reincorporating their personal LLCs in other states.

At the same time, there are too many ways wealth can be leveraged to cover living expenses in ways that can be masked as business expenses (hence the aforementioned LLCs) with the cash flow covering those expenses hidden from the taxes that should consider that flow as income. Fixing that issue resolves the downside of dis-incentivizing the buy and hold investments that provide stability.

Yes, please: tax the wealthy, but do it smartly.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"A new age of American conservatism"

You can just say "fascist with a distinct undertone of jesus freak"; it's ok. Honesty won't kill you; even if the new age of american conservatism probably wants to.

 

[C64 raids Bungling Bay]

Porn is how we communicate all the ideas we still need to try. How isn't that speech?

 

[chaos215bar2]

Taxing investment holdings ignores the value produced by the investment…

Not sure I quite understand this point.

I can see exactly what value it provides to the individual to be able to hold onto assets like stocks in perpetuity, but what value does this provide to society? Why should someone like Musk, say, be able to hold onto their controlling stakes in their companies in perpetuity, regardless of whether they even care to be involved in the day to day?

I would think it would provide more value if we forced billionaires to effectively earn their keep if they want to hold onto their billions forever. This doesn't actually seem all that different from the reason land is taxed — it's effectively "use it or lose it". If you're not deriving enough value to pay the tax, then the asset should eventually be sold to someone who's actually going to use it and who is willing to pay the tax.

By making this tax extremely progressive, you effectively impose a soft wealth cap. If someone is so good they can continue earning enough to keep up their billions, then presumably they're benefiting society enough that it's worth it for them to hold that kind of power. If someone wants to sit on their billions and instead use it to distort the political process and act out their personal power fantasies, then they clearly do not need to be holding on to that kind of wealth.

Sure, some of these people will choose to move elsewhere. I say the receiving state / country can have them. And there's no reason we can't also tax some of those billions on the way out.

I'd much rather live in a state or country rich people choose to live in because it's actually a great place to live than in a location they choose to live simply because it offers a nice tax advantage.

 

[jdale]

Taxing investment holdings ignores the value produced by the investment,

For example, who would be propping up inherently unprofitable AI currently destroying society if it wasn't for the wealthy investor class?

 

[Ildatch]

can we as a country, once and for all, decide where the line between childhood and adulthood is

THERE. ISN'T. ONE.

 

[rbryanh]

Some scientific studies suggest that adolescent exposure to porn increases rates of depression, low self-esteem, and normalized violence…

And what's the impact of watching bloody murder, mass murder, torture, genocide, human extinction events, and violent destruction of infrastructure from exploding cars to exploding planets? Who here hasn't watched more deaths than they can count, sometimes from a distance, sometime close to be spattered with blood? How many people have you seen shot? Ten thousand? One hundred thousand? A million? Stabbed? Writhing on the ground screaming in agony? Who hasn't paid for the privilege of watching the most gruesome and bizarre deaths humans can imagine?

I'm a furiously liberal gay man of the sort conservatives love to hate and fear. That said, I once came across my 11 year old nephew watching a video of a barely pubescent Japanese girl having a very large koi inserted into her rectum. She was crying and screaming, "The shame! The shame! The shame is in my @ss!"

If these are the only available choices, I vote for the Asian/humiliation/fish fetish, but the truth is that we now live in a world where anyone can create convincing imagery of anything they like. Never mind that it's still a billion dollar industry, the very concept of "porn" is quaint, like whalebone stays or carburetors.

But this is not about porn. It's about stampeding the masses over the conservative cliff.

 

[black-dog]

Surprised I’m the first to raise this, but the subhead:

Half the country has enacted age-verification laws to prevent minors from viewing porn.

Accepts the premise that this is what those laws are for, when the reality is they’re opening the door to (immediately) blocking things like trans education by labeling it porn, to eventually ending anonymity for all the nefarious reasons you would suspect.

And that’s not me, you can go find them saying this (particular right now the trans content piece).

So I encourage us to reject the initial false frame. The open the fight on pornography and protecting kids because they know they’ll find the defense weaker. Don’t concede.

 

[rbryanh]

One about can we as a country, once and for all, decide where the line between childhood and adulthood is…

Please god-I-don't-believe-in, no. Objectively speaking, there is no such distinction. Every culture has its signifiers, each more arbitrary and illogical than the last.

Childhood and adulthood are abstractions defined by culture, then, more often than not, abused. Given that both are completely arbitrary and entirely symbolic, you can no more distinguish a child from an adult than you can a zygote from a person.

The universe is full of realities that don't subscribe to our entirely metaphorical shorthand linguistic notions. Language is a blunt instrument, and law even blunter. You can't dice the onions finer than the blade of your knife. All you can do is make a stinking mess.

 

[Madestjohn]

Please god-I-don't-believe-in, no. Objectively speaking, there is no such distinction. Every culture has its signifiers, each more arbitrary and illogical than the last.

Childhood and adulthood are abstractions defined by culture, then, more often than not, abused. Given that both are completely arbitrary and entirely symbolic, you can no more distinguish a child from an adult than you can a zygote from a person.

The universe is full of realities that don't subscribe to our entirely metaphorical shorthand linguistic notions. Language is a blunt instrument, and law even blunter. You can't dice the onions finer than the blade of your knife. All you can do is make a stinking mess.

You can’t distinguish a person from a zygote ?

You might need to get your vision checked as it sounds like your eyes may be defective
… or maybe your brain

 

[Anti Jimmy]

Why say "a new age of American conservatism" when what you really want to say is "an age of coerced rule by white-supremacist christian nationalist zealots aiming to corrupt our civil society into a techo-feudal police state"?

 

[zdanee]

If you ever wondered what a Christian Taliban would look like: it's the GOP. What? You say they don't behead people? No, they shoot them in their cars, homes and schools.

 

[kaibelf]

“Harmful to minors” eh? How about we use that on screenings of Passion of the Christ, which is just a slickly produced snuff film.

 

[kroboz]

I know there will be centrists and moderates that will go to their graves trying to run defense for and dispute this, but every single action by the new wave of cultural conservatism is building momentum for a backlash that risks tearing apart and silencing their entire movement and political party outright after over a century of malfeasance. It might take extremists mirroring Project 2025 and taking control of eroded guardrails, protections and judicial branch authority, but that day is coming in another short decade.

Their opposition might be incompetent and discombobulated at the moment, and can't seem to force its leadership to get off the billionaire troughs, but it will come and I seriously doubt the voting coalitions from 2016 and 2024 will hold (although left leaning media necessarily hyperventilates about the counterculture and misrepresents the magnitude of MAGA's failures to try and gin up a more permanent rejection of the GOP)

It's important to note that winning elections on slim majorities (less than 60%) creates unrest at any level of government, at liberals may have to counterpunch at disenfranchising voters who in previous elections support pedophiles and domestic terrorists. Which, yes, would flat out remove the 37% MAGA floor and force a judgement on their fate in a New New Deal. Only then could you break the conservative fever since Nixon and have a proper debate about the direction of the country and world by forcing the GOP to rebuild outright from scratch with its wealthiest backers' previously untouchable wealth and intellectual property all back taxed since 2017.

Stop giving me hope things can be better (esp once the geriatric, corrupt, complicit dem leadership ages out of the way).

 

[Mrbonk]

Sure, let's do it. If they also pass a separation of church and state tax. With specific language for extra taxes every time a public official mentions their religion or make any inkling of a statement or trying to pass another law that is clearly based on faith and not reality. Kind of like a "Swear Jar".

 

[DCRoss]

I’m just surprised that porn sites still operating out of the US haven’t simply moved operations elsewhere. Their product would still be every bit as accessible, but not subject to the whims of the current conservative climate in the US.

Or am I missing a salient detail that would make this an inoperable move?

You may want to look up the address for PornHub's head office.

Unfortunately, serving clients inside the USA and taking payments from the serfs there qualifies as doing business within the country, so they are subject to local laws no matter how weird they get.

 

[Hispalensis]

Sure, let's do it. If they also pass a separation of church and state tax. With specific language for extra taxes every time a public official mentions their religion or make any inkling of a statement or trying to pass another law that is clearly based on faith and not reality. Kind of like a "Swear Jar".

I was going to suggest removing the tax exempt status to religious organizations

 

[Madestjohn]

Stop giving me hope things can be better (esp once the geriatric, corrupt, complicit dem leadership ages out of the way).

Sorry to be a Debby Downer but have you checked who waiting the the wings?
They aren’t all AOC or fans of Bernie .. there’ll be plenty of complicity available when they go

And on the other side there’s a nearly endless surplus of influencers and tiktokers standing by to replace all those god damn entrepreneurs and podcasters

 

[jonbob_newcastle]

It's a shame Anglicanism didn't really take off in the States; there's a lot less zealotry and paternalism. Truth be told it's mostly coffee mornings and bake sales.

 

[Deleted member 221201]

Good idea. Make it a tariff so that the porn actors pay it.

Bill it and they will come ?

 

[norton_I]

Playing devils advocate - wouldnt a tax on porn be like the tax I pay when I buy a book? Its not taxing the speech - its taxing the sale.

edit: unless they are charging both sales tax and then also porn sales tax on top of that?

It's an extra tax specifically for porn. So it would face pretty close scrutiny because it was targeted by content.

Ir they wanted to make this stick it would depend on how well they defined a legitimate government interest and how carefully the law targeted that. For instance mandatory registration (with a fee) of adult film production so that they can verify health and safety of the work might be OK as long as it was not so onerous as to effectively bad protected speech. Something like that could easily be legal. A sin tax explicitly meant to punish and suppress constitutional speech with no legitimate government interest is obviously unconstitutional.

But these are not serious people and you shouldn't take their actions seriously. They aren't trying a serious effort to achieve a real policy goal. The flaws are intentional. This is about grandstanding, and then getting to rail about how evil the people who defend our constitutional rights, and finally when it's struck down to rail about activist judges. And who knows, the supreme court is now corrupt enough and in American enough that even when they lose in court and in their appeals, the supreme court may issue a bad faith ruling supporting it pretending it's something it isn't.

 

[WCR-790]

Isn't porn free on the internet? How do "they" tax something that is free? Also, is there any workable definition of porn? Also-also, I sometimes use a VPN to watch content served from other countries. Wouldn't that mean I could just use a VPN to stream porn from a country where it is still free, or not taxed?

 

[fruitcake]

None of those are absurd to tax and none of them are protected rights like speech.

I definitely find a tax on sliced bagels vs whole bagels absurd. On unrealized capital gains as well...

 

[BCGeiger]

SCOTUS can't overturn a ratified Amendment but there are enough MAGA controlled states to ratify a new Amendment to overturn a previous Amendment (ex: 18th Amendment repealed by the 21st Amendment) through the Congressional process or by 2/3's of the States (never done....yet) convention process.

According to the law and the constitution no. But the challenge will be to the process. X state ratified it on a holiday making the process void. Someone sighed the document under the line instead of above it. A senator that voted in favor of sending it to the states was later censured making his vote null so the process was not legal. Believe me this gang is looking for any excuse to do whatever Trump wants them to do. They have already issued several rulings based on logic that would have gotten a law student a failing grade. When the end justifies the means, nothing is safe.

 

[LeftCoastRusty]

They want porn taxes.

Well I want MAGA content and “influencer” taxes. Let’s see who we tax out of existence first.

 

[imikem]

Republican politicians are motivated to lower taxes on income. Well, on high-income earners and businesses. That's their main economic policy.

But the government has to have money for services, so they usually counter-propose taxing consumers.

I think that's probably a big part of the motivation behind the proposal. They get to signal that they are morally upright, and move a small portion of the tax burden away from their big donors.

Lol at the wealthys' tax "burden". Remember when DJT's return got published, and he paid ~$700 income tax. For a fucking year. I pay that every two weeks, and i can tell you I don't piss in a golden commode.

 

[Hammer_Thyme]

I know there will be centrists and moderates that will go to their graves trying to run defense for and dispute this, but every single action by the new wave of cultural conservatism is building momentum for a backlash that risks tearing apart and silencing their entire movement and political party outright after over a century of malfeasance. It might take extremists mirroring Project 2025 and taking control of eroded guardrails, protections and judicial branch authority, but that day is coming in another short decade.

Their opposition might be incompetent and discombobulated at the moment, and can't seem to force its leadership to get off the billionaire troughs, but it will come and I seriously doubt the voting coalitions from 2016 and 2024 will hold (although left leaning media necessarily hyperventilates about the counterculture and misrepresents the magnitude of MAGA's failures to try and gin up a more permanent rejection of the GOP)

It's important to note that winning elections on slim majorities (less than 60%) creates unrest at any level of government, at liberals may have to counterpunch at disenfranchising voters who in previous elections support pedophiles and domestic terrorists. Which, yes, would flat out remove the 37% MAGA floor and force a judgement on their fate in a New New Deal. Only then could you break the conservative fever since Nixon and have a proper debate about the direction of the country and world by forcing the GOP to rebuild outright from scratch with its wealthiest backers' previously untouchable wealth and intellectual property all back taxed since 2017.

Not going to lie, if America could actually follow through on that, I'll move there like I wanted to... I guess 20 years ago now

 

[BCGeiger]

Not going to lie, if America could actually follow through on that, I'll move there like I wanted to... I guess 20 years ago now

Funny coincidence, it was almost exactly 20 years ago that I left the US because I saw the way it was going.

 

[FuzzySquirrel]

I own a company that produced adult content that we distribute through our own family of websites. My company strives to always follow not just the letter of the law, but the spirit, even if we disagree with it.

The age verification laws are one thing. Though, I do truly believe the real solution here is device level verification, not site level. But, most of the adult verification laws have specific provisions regarding how proof of age data is handled, and specifically requiring a site to not keep specific kinds of data.

When it comes to the sites my company operates, we try to to keep as little user data as possible. And the data we do have to keep at all, we try to retain it for the absolute minimal amount of time that we are required to. We don't like having to have any of our users' personal data at all.

The problem with this proposed law in Utah is that it would require us to specifically keep track of what customers from Utah are spending on our sites. Right now, we only check where a user is from to see if they need enhanced age verification. If they do, once the age verification is complete, the only data we store is a flag indicating that the user has undergone and passed the enhanced age verification.

With this Utah law, to comply with it, we would have to keep track of where users are from perpetually. There is no other way to know what users from a specific area are spending. But doing this would violate laws in other states specifically requiring us to delete any personal user information, including location information, for any users as soon as that information is no longer needed for age verification.

Complying with the Utah state law would put us in direct conflict with other state laws. A similar situation is already true with Colorado. Their age verification law is written in such a way as to require technology that doesn't yet exist for verifying a user's age. There is no way that any site can actually comply with Colorado's age verification law right now. The only option to try to be legal is to simply block all visitors from Colorado.

If this law passes in Utah, the same will be true there. As there would be no way to comply with Utah and other states' laws simultaneously, my company will simply be forced to block Utah users from all of our sites.

 

[graylshaped]

For example, who would be propping up inherently unprofitable AI currently destroying society if it wasn't for the wealthy investor class?

Who would be propping it up? The current administrations of both China and the US.

edit: I'm not getting into a Texas sharpshooter debate here. I am a fan of capitalism as fettered as fettered needs to be, and in the post you and our chaotic friend responded to, I described a step that addresses the way wealth is used to dodge contributing to society. As karmically rewarding as it may seem in theory to just take it away from the bastards, we're eventually right back here, probably with a lower number down the road.

 

[RockIslandLine]

Gun ownership is an enumerated right

It is not.
The Federalist papers tell us what a well regulated militia is.
The Federalist Papers : No. 29 : Concerning the Militia From the Daily Advertiser. Thursday, January 10, 1788 HAMILTON

It requires no skill in the science of war to discern that uniformity in the organization and discipline of the militia would be attended with the most beneficial effects, whenever they were called into service for the public defense. It would enable them to discharge the duties of the camp and of the field with mutual intelligence and concert an advantage of peculiar moment in the operations of an army; and it would fit them much sooner to acquire the degree of proficiency in military functions which would be essential to their usefulness. This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety, that the plan of the convention proposes to empower the Union "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, RESERVING TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY THE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS, AND THE AUTHORITY OF TRAINING THE MILITIA ACCORDING TO THE DISCIPLINE PRESCRIBED BY CONGRESS.''

If you can't name the commissioned officer who commands your service, and show your training schedule, the Second Amendment does not apply to you.

 

[chaos215bar2]

I definitely find a tax on sliced bagels vs whole bagels absurd. On unrealized capital gains as well...

The sliced bagel thing refers to New York City's so-called "sandwich tax", which is apparently being used as some sort of cudgel in conservative circles to point out the absurdity of Democratic policies.

The reality, of course, is much more benign. Bread, among other basic food items, is exempt from sales tax. Prepared food, i.e. a "sliced bagel", is not.

What the fact that this is the example that was apparently so notorious as to be brought up in this thread actually tells us is that Democratic city and state taxes are mostly pretty sane.

As for unrealized gains, I'd refer you to my earlier comments. That's also not really the flex you think it is when you actually stop to think about it.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Like this would be any more absurd than what liberals don't mind taxing, constitutional or otherwise: soda, candy, cigarettes, sliced bagels, cup lids, straws, plastic bags, "windfall" profits, unrealized capital gains, billionaires (as a one-off, retroactive, likely illegal way to make up for a shortfall in state budgets that piss money away on stupid things), etc.

Did you not notice sliding from 'overtly unconstitutional' to 'things I think are absurd' as a standard; or were we supposed to not notice?

It's an overwhelmingly massive difference: you can argue all day about what should or shouldn't get some pigouvian taxation(whether that's because you disagree on whether it's a bad thing, or don't like the idea that it's legal for a price at all); but if something is in-scope for first amendment protection any sort of content or viewpoint based taxation is trivially a first amendment violation with some extra steps(and some nominally-neutral stuff might well be; depending on context; I'm sure an entire generation of belligerent old guys would not take long to catch my drift if I went after AM band RF allegedly on spectrum efficiency grounds).

 

[chaos215bar2]

The version you might understand is the Econ 101 lesson George Bailey tries to explain in It's a Wonderful Life. The "stock" represents money that is working within an economy, not sitting in a Scrooge McDuck vault. No government has ever shown it can make those investments more sustainably than a competitive market can. Government spending is part of the economy, but not the most effective part. Bad enough when it starts putting its thumb on the competitive scale, let alone outright picking winners and losers. If you take "stock" from someone, you are taking actual ownership away and giving it to... who, exactly?

I accept the contention that some people have "enough." I'm saying the proposals I've seen are a band-aid of questionable cleanliness.

Fundamentally, the issue comes down to the fact that a small number of people control a significant proportion of financial resources and then use those resources to distort both markets and especially the political process, buying themselves more power and further entrenching their financial position. That's a huge problem whose effects we're seeing very clearly right now.

It's hard to imagine a more direct way to get at that problem than a blanket tax on assets. That hardly means the government is inserting itself into private business and picking winners and losers. All it means is, you don't get to maintain billions worth of investments in perpetuity unless you're actually earning enough on those investments — i.e. putting them to work in the economy and seeing proportional returns — to pay the required tax.

When you claim that stock represents some special class of asset that should be untouchable vs. other things where it's so accepted that the government gets to tax unrealized gains that people don't even think of it as such — real estate being a prime example — what you're saying in effect is that a billionaire's ability to maintain their stock portfolio without government interference is more important than a working family's ability to maintain their housing status.

The problem we're solving for is essentially someone like Musk using their billions to insert themselves into the political process and their own political winners and losers, and the simple fact is that a vast wealth of unrealized gains represents the power to do precisely that. One could claim that the solution should be to address government corruption and leave the billionaires alone. I would argue that human nature dooms that path to failure unless you also simultaneously address wealth inequality.