Silicon Valley-backed groups sue Maryland to kill country's first-ever online advertising tax

[Wicked Blue]

Source: Washington Post

By Tony Romm
Feb. 18, 2021 at 1:53 p.m. EST

Top lobbying groups backed by Amazon, Facebook, Google and other technology giants sued Maryland on Thursday, seeking to scuttle a new state tax on their massive online-advertising revenues — and stop other local governments from following its lead.

The legal challenge contends that Maryland’s first-in-the-nation tax is unfair, unconstitutional and incompatible with federal laws that prohibit state policymakers from instituting levies specifically targeting online services.

The lawsuit is backed by a broad coalition of businesses nationwide through a series of trade groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, a Washington-based organization that counts Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies among its members. It carries great legal and political significance at a time when lawmakers well beyond Maryland’s borders are starting to eye the tech industry’s eye-popping pandemic profits as a potential source of much-needed new revenue.

“In light of the current pandemic and economic uncertainty, increasing taxes on services used by small businesses to keep themselves running is a particularly poor and ill-timed policy,” Caroline Harris, the vice president for tax policy at the U.S. Chamber, said in a statement.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/18/amazon-facebook-google-maryland-lawsuit-tax/

[mezame]

1. Break Them All Up

And so it begins. This, and other state revenue-generating legislation (that they're so afraid of), will only give impetus to Congressional Anti-Trust efforts. They're willing to spend millions on legal fees/challenges, but they can't/won't pay their fair share of the cost of doing business. And even then they'd still make more money than sense.

[Generic Other]

2. If making them pay taxes means less spam, I am all for it

Bury them in tax -- just like my email is buried, my every click on every website is buried. I never asked them to stalk me with ads. Let them start paying for being annoying. Maybe they will stop ruining people's internet experiences. Maybe I won't need to adblock ad infinitum.

[Lonestarblue]

7. Amen!

Ads have become so in your face that they ruin the online experience. I am already paying a fee to my Internet provider to give me access to the online world. Why should I have to pay another fee to keep the ads away? It’s like paying a fee to be a library member (which I have to do) and getting books with every other page full of ads you have no interest in.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Make them user-access fees instead of a tax

You wanna get on the highway? It's a toll road.

[GB_RN]

4. User Access?

Aren’t Internet prices high enough without adding user access fees on top of what we pay (highest prices) for the slowest Internet in the industrialized world?

[Wicked Blue]

5. And why should we, the users, pay to see ads? nt

[bucolic_frolic]

6. NO they're not, and you'd be charging the behemoth companies for their use, not users

pay attention, almost sounds like gaslighting.

[GB_RN]

10. Gaslighting?

By whom?

The US has the slowest Internet speeds, the worst access to the Internet and the highest prices for the speeds we have compared to other countries.

Your post didn’t specify charging companies, so i know I wasn’t the only person who was confused as to whom you were wanting to charge with the usage of the term “user-access”. Usually that’s relegated to mean the end-user.

[bucolic_frolic]

8. Isn't it that way in your country?

[cstanleytech]

9. I hate online ads with a passion of a thousand suns and I would not shed a tear if their servers

would catch on fire and melt.
That aside I think this is a freaking stupid idea for Maryland to try and implement.

[BobTheSubgenius]

11. Online advertising is a money-making MACHINE!

While it is probably the most popular personal podcast in existence, Joe Rogan totally goes his own way, purposely eschewing money-making aspects of his miniature US Mint for various reasons...mainly content control. It still manages to pull in a very nice $30,000,000 a year.

I used to work for a horrible person for a while, and his business needed online advertising to survive. I can't imagine what his annual costs were for that, but I know for a fact that he had to top up his prepaid account (the only way they will run your ads) twice in one day, for $750 each time.

That was with Google Ads, and you can just imagine how many advertisers use their service, and how many were a bigger operation than his little semi-scam.

[paulkienitz]

12. Go Maryland! Fuck all online advertisers sideways.

America would be a better place if the entire advertising industry were about a tenth of its current size.