Babes in BloodLand: Comic-Con raises taxing issues for California

Bloody mess. This three year old was spray painted with blood at this make your own horror epic booth.  Photos by Max Donner.

San Diego has worked hard to build its brand as one of America’s favorite family vacation destinations. That is also the city’s second largest industry. So seeing children too small to walk used as models in artificial blood sacrifice demonstrations and posing for pictures at the booth of “Let’s be Perverts” raises taxing issues for the San Diego Visitor and Convention Bureau.

Comic-Con has somehow managed to maintain tax-free status as a 501(c) non-profit organization. It is probably the most profitable non-profit in California. Ticket sales alone bring in over $3 million. Exhibitions, entry fees, concession fees and other programs bring the total take to over $10 million. Comic-Con does not pay a dime of taxes on any of that and places a heavy burden on taxpayer supported services such as ambulance response and police.

Most people in the arts community would consider this bad enough, but the bad attitude of the San Diego Police Department makes it a lot worse. While the union dominated SDPD likes to point to statistics showing decreasing crime, no one in the insurance industry believes them. The SDPD is so distracted by union lawsuits over overtime and other reflections of poor leadership, it has become totally ineffective in dealing with its liability for malicious prosecutions and malicious investigations resulting from the free-for-all at Comic-Con. In fact, the SDPD has declined to refute serious charges filed with the San Diego Ethics Commission that its officers intentionally lie about the inconsistencies in policing of ComicCon compared to other events. San Diegans who are intelligent enough to see through the fraud in city pension accounting are disparaged by the SDPD as “not making sense” while purveyors of artificial blood to three year olds get a warm welcome and tax-free benefits.

The SDPD, purveyors of artificial blood to three year olds, the owners of “Let’s be Perverts” and other Comic-Con bulwarks are getting protection from an unexpected source -- the San Diego Health and Human Services Department. Their mental health expert Virginia Smith has asserted that entertaining three year olds with blood spray painting and dressing them up as prostitutes poses no mental health risks, but objecting to the SDPD’s inconsistencies could be grounds for institutionalization or mandatory mental health counseling.

There’s no need to fear! The Internal Revenue Service is here! A fundamental requirement for maintaining non-profit status is demonstrating that an organization serves the public good. As deficits balloon, the IRS has stepped up enforcement. It will be interesting to hear from qualified non-profit tax experts how the “Ladies of the Evil Dead” and their compatriots at Comic-Con are serving the public good.

To protect and serve? The San Diego Police Department  watches over the entrepreneurs of “Let’s be Perverts” and Ladies of the Evil Dead and wastes millions of dollars in legal costs defending complaints for malicious prosecution and entrapment as a result.