Brickbat: We Are Not Amused

In Buffalo, New York, city officials say they will pause efforts to collect amusement license fees from local music venues. A law allowing the city to collect the fees has been on the books since 1927, but the city only began attempting to collect the money earlier this month. The fees are charged per event, based on the price of tickets. Some venue owners told local media the fees could cost them $10,000 to $25,000 a year, and larger venues said the fees could cost them as much as $100,000. Some city council members said they were caught off guard by the move to collect the fees and plan to address the issue when the council meets again in September.

Comments

[SQRLSY]

Coming soon to a commenting forum close to you:

Government Almighty commenting licences!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Some city council members said they were caught off guard by the move to collect the fees...

Buffalo's bureaucratic deep state runs the show.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

It's an odd kind of tax law that the bureaucrats can forget to enforce for 97 years, then send around collection letters, then take it back. Are they going to charge the (ir)responsible bureaucrats for all those uncollected taxes of years past?

Did it lapse 2-3 years later during the Great Depression? Or during WW II?

Maybe it was repealed and the record of the repeal lost.

[mad.casual]

You're potentially missing a bit of oddity to the sticky wicket. It's entirely possible that the law was enforced, uninterrupted, against movie theaters, playhouses, TV studios, sporting events, and even traveling circuses or whatever for the entire century and music venues were just intermittently too poor to afford the tax.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Yup, didn't think of that. Probably more likely that burrocrats deciding not to collect a tax.

[Roberta]

Per event based on ticket prices, not sales? They could easily lose money that way.