Also, in Chicago
$25 per gun sales tax approved. I’m pretty sure taxing a right is illegal, like poll taxes. I’m betting the SAF is licking its chops.
8 Responses to “Also, in Chicago”
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November 14th, 2012 at 12:51 pm
You are correct. No way taxing the exercise of a fundamental right passes muster.
Perhaps there should be a “stupid tax,” that every citizen petitioning their government must pay to offset the costs of government action? $1,000,000 per petition seems like an appropriate level.
November 14th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
No, poll taxes are illegal solely because there is a specific Constitutional Amendment making them so. Nor is voting a “right”.
On the gripping hand, you CAN tax certain exercises of rights, but your ability to do so is fairly circumscribed:
1. You can charge a tax that would apply to similar situations not involving a right (i.e., a general sales tax can be charged even when it involves the purchase of a newspaper or Bible, professional writers still have to pay income taxes, etc.).
2. You can charge a tax or fee to pay SPECIFICALLY for the cost of administering a particular program that the person is using. For example, a fee for marriage licenses can be used to pay for the cost of issuing marriage licenses, but MAY NOT be used to pay for teh general cost of the Clerk of Courts office — so the tax or fee must be no higher than roughly commensurate to the per-transaction cost of teh particular service the taxpayer is RECEIVING. Charging $10, because that is a fair approximation of filing the marriage license is fine; charging $20 to cover both the cost of teh licensing scheme AND the operating costs of running Family Courts under the theory that marital abuse, divorce, and abuse or neglect of legitimate children are all related to marraige, would not be legal.
November 14th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
I.e., a $25 tax per gun is almost certainly unConstitutional — just not for the precise reason you state.
November 14th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Therefor we can set up a $25 per post free speech tax on internet posts, to help pay for the cost of FBI monitoring of the internet for bad people.
November 14th, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Unfortunately firearms and ammunition are already taxed, CHI-Town just wants their own special cut.
November 14th, 2012 at 7:46 pm
What, so Chicago can give another $1M to CeaseFire so CeaseFire can give it to homeys in da hood to referee fights again??
November 14th, 2012 at 8:15 pm
RELEASE THE GURAKEN
November 16th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Kristphr:
Only if you can:
A. Establish that it actually costs about $25/post to adequately monitor it. Re-read my #2, above — the fees would have to be set to roughly cover the ACTUAL cost of a guy reading THAT post (on average) to pass muster. Otherwise, it’s automatically verboten as “excessive”.
B. Establish that universal internet post monitoring is Constitutional (you’ve hit a “strict scrutiny” requirement there).