Very interesting move here by Philadelphia in it’s efforts to force a blogger to pay a business privilege license:
Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.
In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.
Wow. That’s unbelievable.
I understand that if you actually run a business around a blog (or blogs) that asking to pay is legitimate but most bloggers aren’t creating businesses around their content – it’s for personal pleasure, entertainment, or other such motivations.
Thoughts? What if your local city started asking for green?
Graham Brenna says
That would be totally not cool. Like you said… I could understand it better if one is making a significant amount of money on their blog. By significant amount of money… I think we’re talking about enough that could sustain them so they didn’t have to have another job.
Yeah… blogging for me is more pleasure than business. Paying for a business license would be no bueno.
Paul Prins says
I have to say I agree with the city here. If you are going to bring in money of any kind, even with a hobby, you need to go through the steps to do that legally. This includes registering with the state and reporting your earnings. Setting up a sole proprietorship (SP) is very simple in the US and relatively cheap to most places in the world. If someone decides to take a hobby site and make any money off it they need to do the paperwork as well. Here in MN where I live your company registration of a SP will last you 10 years for less than $50 and it doesn’t require any additional tax work beyond including any business earnings in your personal return.
Trevor Taylor says
Dude, your personal income is already taxed. This is a double down. A tax before and after. I am self-employed. I report my earnings, then pay taxes. This blogger licence is over the top. Gov’t cannot restrain themselves.
JayCaruso says
This is just dumb and another example of government bureaucracy run amok combined with a total lack of understanding by politicians of the new economy.
It’s easy to see why cities and localities would want to collect business license fees from homeowners that run certain types of businesses out of their homes, but this is just crazy – even if it is a business. Blogging has no local impact that would require a business license.
BenJPickett says
She should figure out what city hosts the servers that host her site and apply for a business license in that city. Mail the city of Philadelphia a copy of that license and a nice letter saying she took their advice but, rather than license with the city of Philadelphia, she chose to license where the content actually resides since that city would be the host of her business and she is merely an outsourced employee and sol beneficiary of the business. Unless of course the servers actually reside in Philadelphia, at which point she should change hosts to get her content moved away from Philli and then write them a nice letter saying that her business location has moved.
Joanna says
I don’t know of my area charging bloggers for business licenses but one of the reasons I haven’t attempted to earn money off my blogs is the effort required to do the right thing for tax ect. purposes wouldn’t be worth the money I would make.
Trevor Taylor says
Ridiculous. I am tired of the gov’t attitude that they are entitled to everything.
Yohan Perera says
I will sue them, if they ever tell me to pay them…
kevin sutherland says
how do you regulate the un regulatable. Bloggers and ecommerce people will just move the domain registar to more friendly states and our countries. The cruise ships do it, and so do big corps do i need to mention what Delaware is known for. Philidelphia should start a series of blogs and sell ad words rather than chasing down the bloggers.
David, justopenthebook.com says
Amazing! Financial crisis tactics! Maybe even worse than the local highway patrol starting to enforce speed limits even 1 mile over to generate some revenue in these tough times.
The city, state and feds should already be getting their taxes if she or any blogger is actually making an income from their site. Why hassle her?
Jim Gray says
might hold us more accountable?