Pennsylvania legislators consider violent game tax
by Alexander Sliwinski 
{ Mar 9th 2009 at 4:47PM }
To be clear, the meeting was exploratory, so it's a lot of talk and very little substance -- like most government conversation about video games (www.instantrimshot.com). If you're in the mood for watching congressional proceedings about taxing video games, check out the video after the break.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mr Khan @ Mar 9th 2009 4:51PM
I wasn't aware that much big-name development went on in this state. Maybe over in Philly (which is trying to make itself a center for the arts)
Josh @ Mar 9th 2009 7:32PM
No. ...heheh, Chris...
Also, Pennsylvania, let's not get carried away here.
HitNRun @ Mar 9th 2009 9:47PM
If this happens, I'll be so angry I'll kill someone.
/rimshot
No seriously, if this went through, all my business would be transferred to Amazon or other internet retailers, circumventing both the tax and the normal PA sales tax. GG unforeseen consequences of government intervention in the marketplace.
HitNRun @ Mar 9th 2009 9:49PM
If this happens, I'll be so angry I'll kill someone.
/rimshot
No seriously, if this went through, all my business would be transferred to Amazon or other internet retailers, circumventing both the tax and the normal PA sales tax. GG unforeseen consequences of government intervention in the marketplace.
HitNRun @ Mar 9th 2009 9:50PM
God damn it! Downvoting myself for the double post, then getting out the scourge. Wkkkshht!
aacman007 @ Mar 9th 2009 4:55PM
Horse shit. What about the tax on violence and sex in movies? Sheit...
offday @ Mar 9th 2009 5:56PM
You mean Hollywood? They would never tax them. Where do you think all these crappy politicians get all their campaign funds from?
aacman007 @ Mar 9th 2009 5:57PM
Word...
Kyle @ Mar 9th 2009 6:40PM
Truly, their hipocrisy knows no bounds.
Kaemon @ Mar 9th 2009 7:25PM
Democrats at work people!
They just love trying to run your lives.
LaughingTarget @ Mar 9th 2009 9:32PM
Dude, any politician you elect to take care of your own responsibilities will do this because someone else elected them to do that for them. You can't get all the benefits of a Government given anything without taking all the crap you hate. Either give up the stuff you like or live with the abuse. It doesn't matter what letter they arbitrarily hang after their name.
THE WICKER MAN (BWF) (GT: Dalek Prime) @ Mar 9th 2009 4:55PM
What the hell? Why are we under assault when the rest of the entertainment industry may do as they please. These money grubbers smell blood in the water.
Magetto @ Mar 9th 2009 4:58PM
Pennsylvania certainly wont do anything like that for film since they've really been trying to get movie companies to start making films here.
JoeTheBlow @ Mar 9th 2009 5:20PM
Don't take it personally, they just want money, NEED money to survive the credit crisis, and will try to get it from laws that the public won't go "Holy shit, we can't stand for this, lets oust these bastards from the office!".
Violent Games are just an easy safe target, for now. Once jobs are threatened, the idea will disappear.
Dirty @ Mar 9th 2009 4:57PM
Who gets to determine what constitutes "violent".
Mike @ Mar 9th 2009 5:01PM
Miyamoto
Markez @ Mar 9th 2009 5:06PM
Dirty, you do. Please tell us, oh wise one, what counts, and what does not. The fine state of Pennsylvania will listen.
Dirty @ Mar 9th 2009 5:09PM
Well I found that boom blox was rather disturbing.
Markez @ Mar 9th 2009 5:12PM
Agreed, the sheer horror of being able to whip around a huge jenga block into a bridge, separating a gorilla family, and sending their mother flying into an abyss of warm and friendly colors could truly turn a young mind to similar violence.
Dirty @ Mar 9th 2009 5:13PM
Well lets tax that mother fucker to death.
Markez @ Mar 9th 2009 5:20PM
Maybe if those parental education programs would've been around when I was younger, I'd still have my gorilla mother...
*sobs*
Vidikron @ Mar 9th 2009 5:31PM
Yeah, I didn't like how innocent animal specators could be killed by flying objects in Boom Blox.
Nick the Hero of Canton @ Mar 9th 2009 4:58PM
Watchmen was more violent of a movie than any game I have ever played.
Where's the tax on the movie tickets for it?
(loved the movie though)
Nick the Hero of Canton @ Mar 9th 2009 4:59PM
Also to be clear I'm not complaining about the violence.
Michelobius @ Mar 9th 2009 5:13PM
Clearly you haven't played God of War. But no, it's definitely wrong to made legal differences by content, especially when it's also only one genre that's affected.
Dirty @ Mar 9th 2009 5:16PM
Watchmen's violence was a bit more realistic and jarring (likely because it was sudden and a bit unexpected). Watchmen also had a better sex scene and an attempted rape with strong violence torwards a woman.
Michelobius @ Mar 9th 2009 5:24PM
I liked the Watchmen movie, but you will never convince me that there is something more violent out there than God of War. I liked that game too, but it's so over-the-top. You have a case saying Watchmen's violence is more realistic, but it's not more violent, and not worse.
Tall @ Mar 9th 2009 6:17PM
Oh, also, Watchmen had many explicit sex scenes, when games are lucky to get by with a bare breast without starting a media fiasco. R rating equates to M, and both are up to the retailed to decide. So why is it such a big deal when a game has a sex mini-game ala GTA: San Andreas, but when the R rated movie has a drawn out, lengthy, explicit scene it's just rated R and nobody looks at it twice?
sea @ Mar 9th 2009 4:58PM
What a load of shit. Taxing violent videogames has nothing to do with education and everything to do with profiting. Violence is what sells these days and you can bet your ass some politician will have his or her fingers in the pot. Increased prices will not sit well with the industry or customers, either. If they are concerned about kids getting their hands on these games, then charging consumers or withdrawing money from developers isn't going to help anything. According to recent surveys, most parents understand ESRB ratings and monitor the games their children buy and play. If that's the case, then it shows parents giving consent to their kids, and punishing the industry will solve absolutely nothing.
Michelobius @ Mar 9th 2009 5:16PM
It's not like the government is swimming in money and looking to expand their profits. They're neck deep in debt and looking for ways to help the economy. Taxing violent videogames would be wrong, but don't act like politicians directly profit from tax increases.
BigD145 @ Mar 9th 2009 4:59PM
Wouldn't this be taxing adults who already lose a third of their paychecks to state and federal taxes? I'm all for taxing people to keep roads and bridges intact, but this is targeting the wrong demographic. If you want a tax to fund "education" of adults with children, why don't you tax diapers or private schools?
David @ Mar 12th 2009 7:20AM
Who do you think pays for diapers and private schools? That's right, parents with 1/3+ of their incomes being taxed. This tax at least would target a large demographic of "kids" whose money is derived from tax-free incomes (mainly because they don't make enough to lose anything to taxes with a part-time job, and if they lose anything it's less than 1% of their total income)
JoeTheBlow @ Mar 9th 2009 5:14PM
Desperate, money-starved councils and states are gonna try everything to extract tax money from anywhere they can.
This will not end well, people.
Tall @ Mar 9th 2009 5:19PM
So in other news, the government gains the ability to tax anything they dont like into oblivion. Oh wait...they're already doing that with cigarettes. So I'm going to be happy to turn to piracy in ten years when I've got to pay an extra ten dollars because it's got an M rating. That, or by then digital distribution will be the primary means of getting a game, and as far as I know that's non-taxable...for now.
Either way, it's a good day to not live in Pennsylvania.
Brandon @ Mar 9th 2009 5:31PM
I say bull$hit! They want to tax videogames, but not Joe Schmoe who sits down and buys porn online and via other means? That's a load of $hit!
Michelobius @ Mar 9th 2009 6:16PM
People pay for porn? Who are these idiots? Don't they know there are thousands of hours of free porn out there?
Oh, and you can swear here. Bullshit, god-damn, shit, etc.
ice~ @ Mar 9th 2009 5:33PM
WHY AREN'T WE LOVED?!?!?! Us gamers are always under attack. Let's start our own country!!
ChiTownRuler23 @ Mar 9th 2009 5:39PM
We'll call it Funcoland.
ice~ @ Mar 9th 2009 5:49PM
*tears*
Iroquois @ Mar 9th 2009 7:45PM
We'll all pile into a ship named the Fireflower to escape oppression. Then we'll reach a land where we meet small round brown people with no arms who will teach us how to grow mushrooms. Then we'll jump on them and send them to live beneath the warp pipes. Congratulations. We just founded America II, the low-budget sequel to our life now.
HitNRun @ Mar 9th 2009 9:44PM
I'm tempted to keep creating accounts or switching computer to vote "Funcoland" +10
puh_fifer @ Mar 9th 2009 5:41PM
Maybe this will be as succesful as Rendell's idea to make Route 80 a toll road to pay for roads across the state, you know, the proposed law we spent millions researching and then got shot down because it's AGAINST FEDERAL LAW. Boy do I hate my elected representatives.
DBuck_Eye @ Mar 9th 2009 7:34PM
I did like it when they elected to give themselves a pay raise. That wasn't totally bogus or anything.
Phillip @ Mar 9th 2009 7:46PM
PA sucks. Tuition at Penn State is one of the highest for any public school in the nation. And we're not getting any of the PA Tuition Relief Act money. That's why I'm moving out of the state in 2 years.
puh_fifer @ Mar 9th 2009 9:23PM
That's because Penn State is some sort of weird hybrid, it's not a public state school but recieves some state funding. The official state schools are Bloom, ESU, Kutztown, etc.
Although tuition did go up after Rendell pulled funding from PSU, I remember that being the first thing he did that pissed me off.
jello44 @ Mar 9th 2009 5:49PM
*headdesk*
As a resident of the city of Philadelphia, I get taxed enough as it is. I know it's just proposed at this point; and I hope that it never reaches any point other than that. But I REALLY don't need more money taken out of my pocket for silly reasons such as this.
John Z @ Mar 9th 2009 5:54PM
Then call your reps! This is the time when they need to be told "bad, bad, bad!"
jaredgood1 @ Mar 9th 2009 5:51PM
Who defines "violent"? I think Madden is pretty damn violent. Look at Mario, you stomp on animals and burn them to death. Cooking Mama glorifies knives. Scrabble could be considered violent because you can use words like murder, strangle and pederast. Hell, any game with an explosion in it could be considered violent.
John Z @ Mar 9th 2009 5:52PM
I called my rep in the General Assembly, and I suggest you folks do the same. Well, the ones who live in Pennsylvania, anyway. (Find your rep here: http://tinyurl.com/ytn27g )
Be polite, be calm, and stress that creating DISincentives for tech jobs and economic stimulation (read: forcing game devs to never consider PA as an office location and making it harder for gamers to, y'know, spend money on the games they want, respectively) is fantastically unwise given the current economic climate.
You Philly folks had better get on this PDQ or us 'Burghers are gonna come over there and take your cheesesteaks. Srsly.
offday @ Mar 9th 2009 5:56PM
"To be clear, the meeting was exploratory, so it's a lot of talk and very little substance -- like most government conversation about video games."
You mean like most government, period.