Leave it to the Italians to come up with the latest technique for funding big government, the porn tax.
ROME - Italy's cash-strapped government has decided to hike taxes on one of the country's few vibrant industries, pornography, to help rein in the burgeoning budget deficit, government sources told Reuters on Tuesday.The "porno-tax", which imposes an additional levy of 25 percent on all income from pornography, is contained in a package of amendments to the 2006 budget to presented in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday or Wednesday, the sources said.
Under the amendment, subscribers to hard core television channels must also pay additional value-added tax of 10 percent. Altogether, the tougher tax-treatment of porn should bring the government some 300 million euros ($357.5 million) next year.
Surely we can get support from both sides of the asile stateside. I've never met a Democrat who read a tax proposal he didn't like, and the evangelical Republican based would eat this one up in a heart beat. The federal government could swing from a deficit to a surplus, and we could even give the Pentagon a little extra (in exchange for ensuring all enlistees pay their portion of course).