Maryland becomes first state in the nation to tax digital advertising | Hacker News Reader

Maryland becomes first state in the nation to tax digital advertising

arstechnica.com

28 pointsnixass11 comments

I hate taxes just like everybody else. But when the economy moves from physical to virtual, lawmakers are forced to do silly things like this. It’s quite possible that 5 years from now, this will seem prescient.

There should be no such taxes. No sales, use, income, federal, state, city, property, ... and list goes on.

Taxes causes billions in wasted resources.

The simplest answer is there should be one universal tax. Wealth Tax. That's it.

The Income, sales, property, etc taxes are to wealth tax, what an equation is to its reduced form..

sales + income + property = wealth tax

2x + 3.5x + 2.8x = 8.3x (pretty much)

it can be progressive and it accounts for everything...

100k in SF vs 100k in Utah.

Young broke person making is first 100k vs multi billionare making is 10000th 100k.

Now think about insane benefits to small businesses. Half the admin cost is all due to documenting for tax purposes.

Interstate commerce is a federal matter for a reason. Lets not create a new logistical nightmare of a tax and regieme with jurisdictions.

What if it's through ad networks? Do the ad-networks pay or do they bill their users? Do they start offering the option, "exclude Maryland"? It seems to me this would be really, really difficult to enforce. So much of what is digital doesn't come with tags. Ads may be relabeled "suggestions" to avoid laws.

Target: all of US, exclude Maryland

This is just a software update from being viable

What would this mean, digital advertisers just refuse to advertise in Maryland?

Shit, sign me up for a plane ticket (or VPN bouncing from Maryland) right now.

possibly, yes. after noticing their first bill in 2022 or 2023.

different advertisers would fill in the gap for sure, efficient market

Will they eat it, or increase the cost by 12%? Or maybe surcharge?

Still, doesn't seem as worst thing to tax, if something specific is taxed.

this adds entry-barriers and further strengthens current giants

Limits don't seem too bad 100 million of global revenue or 1m local. At least on local level, it seems entirely reasonable. If you can sell million worth of adds you can manage to pay some taxes... And the rate is also lower than the big players.

Though, enforcing this is quite interesting.

yea, that's what concerning about this. The burden will be put on sellers to self report or face a chance of being found out and extreme fines. Now multiply this by 50 states, you'd have to hire a company aka. lower profit margins in the end... Then multiply this by N countries and their localities and you will always be breaking few rules unbeknownst to you.

Basically what happens with any new tech, some become big players, tech becomes mainstream, regulating begin, innovation stifles, new comers are out of luck. Just take social media. There was no GDPR before, now as a company you need to have resources to implement this and any number of other regulatory requirements.

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