In the city of Philadelphia, Mayor Micheal Nutter has decided to levy the Business Privilege Tax on anyone who makes any income by means of advertisement on the internet. What does mean, this means bloggers and freelance writers can be hit with a three hundred dollar tax regardless if whatever or not you've made a sizable profit.
Blog-o-sphere outraged by city's proposal
As you can imagine, this purposed “blog tax” has left a foul taste in the mouths of bloggers who happen to live in Philadelphia. It has also sparked debate over the internet for bloggers who don't even live in the city, doing a Google search for the world “Philadelphia Tax Blog” under the Blog option will turn up over two hundred thousand posts decided to the topic.
Is it a actually blog on tax, or is it something else
The city has denied creating a tax exclusively on bloggers, instead as stated earlier what they are doing is deriving from the Business Privilege Tax and classifying blogs as a “business” because of ad revenue (no matter how small that revenue may be.)
What about the freelance writers
Freelancer writers faced a similar problem years ago and have to pay the Business Privilege Tax if they want to write and be compensated for it. Bloggers may end up going down the same road. The Business Tax would be three hundred dollars for a lifetime privilege as opposed to fifty dollars a year for a limited privilege. This is addition to the standard federal and state taxes that will be levied against any net income.
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