6 ms·

Tax-deductible support of local news is a fantastic idea.

by miiiiiike 7y ago

eru 7y ago
Why? Creating yet more loopholes doesn't sound like a good idea.
- ian0 7y ago
  Not sure it could be classified as a loophole really. Unless your an employee or affiliate of the newspaper itself in which case it likely verges on fraud. It's more like a government-led incentive scheme to support.
  - thombat 7y ago
    In general I think that if the State wants to support some activity it should do so directly by allocating funds, not by making the tax system more complex. The introduction of the GST consumption tax in NZ was admirable in this respect: prior to it there were layers of sales taxes and special tweaks to try to promote specific industries, so the final price at a checkout could be dismayingly more than the sum of the shelf prices. With GST there was a single tax rate, no retail exceptions, and no "sticker shock" since quoting tax-exclusive prices in retail was illegal. About the same time the personal income tax mechanism became simple enough that for ordinary employees four sides of A4 sufficed, completed in half an hour. Bliss! (normalised to expectations of bureaucracy) A contrasting system: once I bought a T-shirt at a general store in Scotland and having paid the shopkeeper said genially "you won't be needing that any more" and snipped a small cloth loop from between the shoulders, explaining that in doing so he had converted it from a child's pinafore (VAT rate 0%) to a man's T-shirt (17.5% at the time). I want to live in a country where all children are adequately clothed but it seems to me simpler to fund that directly, e.g. via a benefit for those with dependent children, possibly income-tested. If the concern is that the "feckless poor" will just waste the money then I'd question (a) whether this popular demon is actually so common and (b) whether such people switch from proper parenting to wastreldom on the basis of a one-fifth price increase.
    - eru 7y ago
      Yes. Thanks for the explanation! The 'opposite side' of that is also true: I'd rather see a carbon tax than eg photovoltaic subsidies. The latter requires picking winners, and the recipients need to interact with bureaucracy to claim. The former rewards simply consuming less just as much as eg switching to renewables; and you don't need a lawyer to claim your (relative) rewards of lower taxes.
      - buboard 7y ago
        You can tie subsidies to the "amount of CO2 spared compared to the average". Carbon tax creates the moral hazard of normalizing pollution, as long as you pay your tax.
        jermaustin1 7y ago
        But due to the higher costs, all but the wealthiest will be "forced" into making changes to their patterns. There was a recent Planet Money episode about these Pigouvian taxes[1]. 1: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774494691/episode-949-the-pigou-club https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774494691/episode-949-the-pig...
        eru 7y ago
        You seem to be using a non-standard definition of moral hazard? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard) "[A]mount of CO2 spared compared to the average" seems to be hard to define: if I burn lots of natural gas to create electricity, I release less natural gas than if I burn coal. But I release more than if I had managed to make do without that electricity. But yes, a carbon tax is exactly that: if you pay your tax, releasing CO2 is legally and morally fine. There's a certain amount that we can safely release. (That amount is smaller than what we release today.) The climate doesn't care about who's releasing CO2. So we use willingness to pay taxes to ration out that limited supply of allowable CO2 emissions. Eg your fear seems to be that rich people can just buy indulgences and keep sinning, instead of having to repent? I say compared to giving every person an equal share of allowable emissions directly, I'm happy to personally emit a bit less, and have some ultra rich person indulge in return for them paying crazy amounts of taxes. I don't care about their moral fibre as long as they pay up. If too many people decide to just pay the tax instead of cut their emissions, we'd need to adjust the tax rate. Because of inflation, population growth, advances of science etc, we would want to revise the tax rate every once in a while anyway. (A cap-and-trade system would do that adjustment of the price automatically, but it seems that in practice it's hard for politicians to refrain from handing out permits for free and handing out too many. Eg the EU system would have worked better, if all permits would have been auctioned off by the government instead of being handed out to previous polluters for free.)
- matt4077 7y ago
  "Yet more loopholes" is what happens when you refuse to think for yourself and instead need to cram everything into tiny, generalising, categories. A better framework for evaluating policy is to ask if their objective is worthwhile and if their mechanism is fit: Local news is dying/dead in many regions, yet it is essential for the functioning of democracy. Asking people to make informed decisions without reliable reporting works about as well as a thermostat without a thermometer, i. e. it doesn't. Since everyone profits when others make better decisions at the voting booth, there is a direct argument to be made that the benefit of people subscribing to a local paper goes not to them, but their community, especially since important stories also tend to reach non-subscribers. Assuming one agrees with that point and isn't part of the all-journalists-are-corrupt-marxist-crowd (or the alternative some-blogger-can-do-it-better-crowd), one would want to find ways to support local news. But direct subsidies run into obvious problems. Reducing taxes would then be an obvious way to allow journalism to function: Its benefit is proportional to revenue and therefore preserves the market mechanisms. Books and newspapers actually are exempt/partially exempt from VAT in many countries. But VAT just isn't a relevant factor in most of the US. You can consider this "just a loophole" in the way that "don't put arsenic on pizza" is "just another regulation".
  - eru 7y ago
    Who decides what's tax-exemption worthy journalism versus yellow press filth / entertainment? Any reduction of taxes on a special category means a relatively heavier tax burden on other necessities. Like tampons. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampon_tax for equivalent outrage. Btw, I'm all in favour of allowing people to put arsenic on pizza, as long as its clearly labelled.
  - VLM 7y ago
    How is local news essential to democracy or help make better voting decisions? For example, according to Patch (which is not nonprofit) this morning, if I exclude the vast amount of advertising and pathological fake news and focus on actual local coverage, in my hometown the local electronics recycling program is temporarily moving because of road construction, and three miles across town the police have reported three recent delivery package thefts. How would either story influence me being more or less likely to vote for Trump in 2020? There's been an intense cultural shift towards not making informed decisions in the voting booth; one MUST either vote along demographic identity lines or optionally follow groupthink or keep very, very quiet lest suffer possibly violent consequences. If those cultural trends change, then there would be motivation for informed voting. However, "everyone in charge" at this time likes the system and its a disinformation to pretend informed voting is relevant at this time. The problem at this time isn't "voter education" but "conform to your group or be punished".
- jcranberry 7y ago
  Maybe all solely news media companies should be non-profits. Current incentives have led the news media to churnalism, sensationalism, and the near extinction of long form journalism.
  - abawany 7y ago
    I agree about churnalism but do you really want your tax dollars to pay for "The Enquirer"? Cause you know they will get classified as a "newspaper".
    - eru 7y ago
      And arguably they provide more useful news for most people than 'serious' newspapers that get you the latest political outrage.
witherk 7y ago
I don't think influencing the media should be tax deductible. On the other hand,it does seem like the autotrophs of the journalism ecosystem are dying off pretty quickly and something has to be done.
conanbatt 7y ago
Why? Now the newspaper is conditioned by the government.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  So is every business.
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    Then lets make everyone a non-profit for tax purposes, since its the same.
    - joshuaissac 7y ago
      How is it the same? The newspaper is an actual non-profit (the shareholders had to give up control to get the status) but what you seem to be suggesting is to give for-profit businesses non-profit status for tax purposes even when they are not actually non-profit organisations. Or do you mean that businesses should be able to convert to non-profit organisations when the business is no longer viable? I can agree with that sentiment. If the shareholders are prepared to give up control, and the creditors are paid off, it would be great if businesses converted to tax-exempt non-profits instead of going bust entirely.
      - conanbatt 7y ago
        Previous poster implied that all businesses are influenced by government so the non-profit status does not have additional bindings. I answered that if all businesses are regulated by government regardless, why collect taxes at all, since they are all extensions of government willpower.
        Dylan16807 7y ago
        The reason the government collects taxes is to make money, not to extend willpower to the businesses it taxes. The extra influence for non-profits is a side effect and not very large compared to baseline laws. It's not a goal, and it wouldn't make up for the loss of revenue; it serves a much smaller and completely different purpose.
cdolan 7y ago
Not to the same scale of Amazon, but UPMC (Pittsburgh’s regional medical giant) is a non profit who made $400 million profit a few years ago to some outrage. Their CEO is a pretty high flying guy for being a non profit! Suspiciously they made near zero profit the next year.
- Shivetya 7y ago
  non profit doesn't mean the executive level goes without, charities are infamous in this regard. that colleges can hide their endowments behind similar is just more proof we have a tax system designed to benefit the few and not the many I have no issue with local papers going non profit, however the idea they can do it any not cross into the political side is going to be a stretch. either from the weight given to certain stories, selection of letters to editors, down to opinion pieces, there are many ways to skirt the rules
Someone1234 7y ago
Congress should bring back the "FCC fairness doctrine"[0] and tie it into tax deductible for news outlets. If you're willing to be an unbiased source for news, you get tax benefits, if you want to be partisan you're a private company. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
- dmix 7y ago
  We have a news company called CBC here in Canada that is supported by tax payers and is supposed to be politically neutral but everyone knows its a left-wing partisan news source. It's just the nature of the business (ie, editors/writers/university english depts tend to be left leaning and then fill the news room with like minded people, with maybe one token conservative guy like NYT does) and even more so when its existence becomes tied to government spending and policy. Not to mention how hysterical and FUD-filled politics has gotten recently I'm highly skeptical that anything non-partisan wing will be tolerated.
  - abawany 7y ago
    You know, I disagree about CBC. I get its newsletters, the daily Alexa bcast, and see its YT videos. From my US-based perspective, it seems that they went well out of their way to be balanced in their coverage. They could have buried SNC Lavelin but it was amazing how long they kept up coverage. Their YT channel had daily "Scheer campaign day X" but I didn't see the corresponding videos for Trudeau.
    - dmix 7y ago
      The mistake people always make is assuming left wing partisan = blind support for Trudeau/liberal party. Which is not what that means. The CBC isn't being accused of being a propaganda arm for a particular party. Not is it not about just blatantly supporting a single centre-left political party. The biases are about ideologies and how idea/stories/people are presented, spun, or casually dismissed in general. A big one is what sources are used. Additionally, even shamelessly partisan rags like WaPo or Vox would be critical of obvious democrat mistakes too. The bar isn't that low yet where something like SNC wouldn't be covered. It's often in the details and the stuff not said or treat uncritically.
abawany 7y ago
(Not trying to virtue signal) I pay for my news subscriptions and really think that is worth doing but I don't agree that news should be tax deductible for the following reasons: * We already have enough tax loopholes. * The definition of "newspaper" is going to get pretty ridiculous fast with this loophole. Do you want your tax dollars to support Goop Weekly? Maybe (I don't know you after all), but I certainly and vehemently do not.

Tax-deductible support of local news is a fantastic idea.

eru 7y ago

Why? Creating yet more loopholes doesn't sound like a good idea.

ian0 7y ago
Not sure it could be classified as a loophole really. Unless your an employee or affiliate of the newspaper itself in which case it likely verges on fraud. It's more like a government-led incentive scheme to support.
- thombat 7y ago
  In general I think that if the State wants to support some activity it should do so directly by allocating funds, not by making the tax system more complex. The introduction of the GST consumption tax in NZ was admirable in this respect: prior to it there were layers of sales taxes and special tweaks to try to promote specific industries, so the final price at a checkout could be dismayingly more than the sum of the shelf prices. With GST there was a single tax rate, no retail exceptions, and no "sticker shock" since quoting tax-exclusive prices in retail was illegal. About the same time the personal income tax mechanism became simple enough that for ordinary employees four sides of A4 sufficed, completed in half an hour. Bliss! (normalised to expectations of bureaucracy) A contrasting system: once I bought a T-shirt at a general store in Scotland and having paid the shopkeeper said genially "you won't be needing that any more" and snipped a small cloth loop from between the shoulders, explaining that in doing so he had converted it from a child's pinafore (VAT rate 0%) to a man's T-shirt (17.5% at the time). I want to live in a country where all children are adequately clothed but it seems to me simpler to fund that directly, e.g. via a benefit for those with dependent children, possibly income-tested. If the concern is that the "feckless poor" will just waste the money then I'd question (a) whether this popular demon is actually so common and (b) whether such people switch from proper parenting to wastreldom on the basis of a one-fifth price increase.
  - eru 7y ago
    Yes. Thanks for the explanation! The 'opposite side' of that is also true: I'd rather see a carbon tax than eg photovoltaic subsidies. The latter requires picking winners, and the recipients need to interact with bureaucracy to claim. The former rewards simply consuming less just as much as eg switching to renewables; and you don't need a lawyer to claim your (relative) rewards of lower taxes.
    - buboard 7y ago
      You can tie subsidies to the "amount of CO2 spared compared to the average". Carbon tax creates the moral hazard of normalizing pollution, as long as you pay your tax.
      - jermaustin1 7y ago
        But due to the higher costs, all but the wealthiest will be "forced" into making changes to their patterns. There was a recent Planet Money episode about these Pigouvian taxes[1]. 1: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774494691/episode-949-the-pigou-club https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774494691/episode-949-the-pig...
      - eru 7y ago
        You seem to be using a non-standard definition of moral hazard? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard) "[A]mount of CO2 spared compared to the average" seems to be hard to define: if I burn lots of natural gas to create electricity, I release less natural gas than if I burn coal. But I release more than if I had managed to make do without that electricity. But yes, a carbon tax is exactly that: if you pay your tax, releasing CO2 is legally and morally fine. There's a certain amount that we can safely release. (That amount is smaller than what we release today.) The climate doesn't care about who's releasing CO2. So we use willingness to pay taxes to ration out that limited supply of allowable CO2 emissions. Eg your fear seems to be that rich people can just buy indulgences and keep sinning, instead of having to repent? I say compared to giving every person an equal share of allowable emissions directly, I'm happy to personally emit a bit less, and have some ultra rich person indulge in return for them paying crazy amounts of taxes. I don't care about their moral fibre as long as they pay up. If too many people decide to just pay the tax instead of cut their emissions, we'd need to adjust the tax rate. Because of inflation, population growth, advances of science etc, we would want to revise the tax rate every once in a while anyway. (A cap-and-trade system would do that adjustment of the price automatically, but it seems that in practice it's hard for politicians to refrain from handing out permits for free and handing out too many. Eg the EU system would have worked better, if all permits would have been auctioned off by the government instead of being handed out to previous polluters for free.)
matt4077 7y ago
"Yet more loopholes" is what happens when you refuse to think for yourself and instead need to cram everything into tiny, generalising, categories. A better framework for evaluating policy is to ask if their objective is worthwhile and if their mechanism is fit: Local news is dying/dead in many regions, yet it is essential for the functioning of democracy. Asking people to make informed decisions without reliable reporting works about as well as a thermostat without a thermometer, i. e. it doesn't. Since everyone profits when others make better decisions at the voting booth, there is a direct argument to be made that the benefit of people subscribing to a local paper goes not to them, but their community, especially since important stories also tend to reach non-subscribers. Assuming one agrees with that point and isn't part of the all-journalists-are-corrupt-marxist-crowd (or the alternative some-blogger-can-do-it-better-crowd), one would want to find ways to support local news. But direct subsidies run into obvious problems. Reducing taxes would then be an obvious way to allow journalism to function: Its benefit is proportional to revenue and therefore preserves the market mechanisms. Books and newspapers actually are exempt/partially exempt from VAT in many countries. But VAT just isn't a relevant factor in most of the US. You can consider this "just a loophole" in the way that "don't put arsenic on pizza" is "just another regulation".
- eru 7y ago
  Who decides what's tax-exemption worthy journalism versus yellow press filth / entertainment? Any reduction of taxes on a special category means a relatively heavier tax burden on other necessities. Like tampons. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampon_tax for equivalent outrage. Btw, I'm all in favour of allowing people to put arsenic on pizza, as long as its clearly labelled.
- VLM 7y ago
  How is local news essential to democracy or help make better voting decisions? For example, according to Patch (which is not nonprofit) this morning, if I exclude the vast amount of advertising and pathological fake news and focus on actual local coverage, in my hometown the local electronics recycling program is temporarily moving because of road construction, and three miles across town the police have reported three recent delivery package thefts. How would either story influence me being more or less likely to vote for Trump in 2020? There's been an intense cultural shift towards not making informed decisions in the voting booth; one MUST either vote along demographic identity lines or optionally follow groupthink or keep very, very quiet lest suffer possibly violent consequences. If those cultural trends change, then there would be motivation for informed voting. However, "everyone in charge" at this time likes the system and its a disinformation to pretend informed voting is relevant at this time. The problem at this time isn't "voter education" but "conform to your group or be punished".
jcranberry 7y ago
Maybe all solely news media companies should be non-profits. Current incentives have led the news media to churnalism, sensationalism, and the near extinction of long form journalism.
- abawany 7y ago
  I agree about churnalism but do you really want your tax dollars to pay for "The Enquirer"? Cause you know they will get classified as a "newspaper".
  - eru 7y ago
    And arguably they provide more useful news for most people than 'serious' newspapers that get you the latest political outrage.

witherk 7y ago

I don't think influencing the media should be tax deductible. On the other hand,it does seem like the autotrophs of the journalism ecosystem are dying off pretty quickly and something has to be done.

conanbatt 7y ago

Why? Now the newspaper is conditioned by the government.

Dylan16807 7y ago
So is every business.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  Then lets make everyone a non-profit for tax purposes, since its the same.
  - joshuaissac 7y ago
    How is it the same? The newspaper is an actual non-profit (the shareholders had to give up control to get the status) but what you seem to be suggesting is to give for-profit businesses non-profit status for tax purposes even when they are not actually non-profit organisations. Or do you mean that businesses should be able to convert to non-profit organisations when the business is no longer viable? I can agree with that sentiment. If the shareholders are prepared to give up control, and the creditors are paid off, it would be great if businesses converted to tax-exempt non-profits instead of going bust entirely.
    - conanbatt 7y ago
      Previous poster implied that all businesses are influenced by government so the non-profit status does not have additional bindings. I answered that if all businesses are regulated by government regardless, why collect taxes at all, since they are all extensions of government willpower.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        The reason the government collects taxes is to make money, not to extend willpower to the businesses it taxes. The extra influence for non-profits is a side effect and not very large compared to baseline laws. It's not a goal, and it wouldn't make up for the loss of revenue; it serves a much smaller and completely different purpose.

cdolan 7y ago

Not to the same scale of Amazon, but UPMC (Pittsburgh’s regional medical giant) is a non profit who made $400 million profit a few years ago to some outrage. Their CEO is a pretty high flying guy for being a non profit! Suspiciously they made near zero profit the next year.

Shivetya 7y ago
non profit doesn't mean the executive level goes without, charities are infamous in this regard. that colleges can hide their endowments behind similar is just more proof we have a tax system designed to benefit the few and not the many I have no issue with local papers going non profit, however the idea they can do it any not cross into the political side is going to be a stretch. either from the weight given to certain stories, selection of letters to editors, down to opinion pieces, there are many ways to skirt the rules

Someone1234 7y ago

Congress should bring back the "FCC fairness doctrine"[0] and tie it into tax deductible for news outlets. If you're willing to be an unbiased source for news, you get tax benefits, if you want to be partisan you're a private company. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

dmix 7y ago
We have a news company called CBC here in Canada that is supported by tax payers and is supposed to be politically neutral but everyone knows its a left-wing partisan news source. It's just the nature of the business (ie, editors/writers/university english depts tend to be left leaning and then fill the news room with like minded people, with maybe one token conservative guy like NYT does) and even more so when its existence becomes tied to government spending and policy. Not to mention how hysterical and FUD-filled politics has gotten recently I'm highly skeptical that anything non-partisan wing will be tolerated.
- abawany 7y ago
  You know, I disagree about CBC. I get its newsletters, the daily Alexa bcast, and see its YT videos. From my US-based perspective, it seems that they went well out of their way to be balanced in their coverage. They could have buried SNC Lavelin but it was amazing how long they kept up coverage. Their YT channel had daily "Scheer campaign day X" but I didn't see the corresponding videos for Trudeau.
  - dmix 7y ago
    The mistake people always make is assuming left wing partisan = blind support for Trudeau/liberal party. Which is not what that means. The CBC isn't being accused of being a propaganda arm for a particular party. Not is it not about just blatantly supporting a single centre-left political party. The biases are about ideologies and how idea/stories/people are presented, spun, or casually dismissed in general. A big one is what sources are used. Additionally, even shamelessly partisan rags like WaPo or Vox would be critical of obvious democrat mistakes too. The bar isn't that low yet where something like SNC wouldn't be covered. It's often in the details and the stuff not said or treat uncritically.

abawany 7y ago

(Not trying to virtue signal) I pay for my news subscriptions and really think that is worth doing but I don't agree that news should be tax deductible for the following reasons: * We already have enough tax loopholes. * The definition of "newspaper" is going to get pretty ridiculous fast with this loophole. Do you want your tax dollars to support Goop Weekly? Maybe (I don't know you after all), but I certainly and vehemently do not.