Harry
CibbuanoTaxed for a lap dance
August 2nd 2006 00:42
News from Buffalo, USA, be expecting to be paying taxes on your lap dance. A strip club owner in New York state is being charged $216,000 worth of sales taxes for services associated with lap dances.
Snowden the owner of the Tally-Ho strip club is rather pissed off with this rather blatant method of government revenue raising. The plot thickens as in July 2004, an official from the state tax office sent him a legal opinion stating that lap dance proceeds would not be subject to the sales tax. Surprise surprise, it appears that the tax office has doubled back on its policy and found a loop-hole to extract some further taxes. The latest official response from the taxation department is;
"The department's criteria is that if the dance occurs in a public part of a club, it would not be taxable. However, as a private one-on-one dance in a separate room would be taxable because the club would be charging an admission fee to that particular room."
What is particularly confusing is that Snowden has paid all his taxes on lap dances that have occurred in his VIP suite where the going rate is $65 for 15 minutes of private dancing and $125 for 30 minutes. Where the taxation department is applying the taxes is on the regular bar area lap dances where a patron is charged $30 a song. The girl keeps $20 and the club takes a $10 commission.
Now lets assume that the sales tax in New York is 10% for lack of a more informed guess. If $216,000 is owed on only the $30 lap dances that would equate to around 72,000 lap dances in one financial year. I can’t find the tax departments tactics all that surprising of shocking. It seems they’d jump through hoops to impose the maximum tax rate of any successful operation. What is surprising is the sheer number of lap dances that appears to be occurring in a single establishment in New York. Even if the sales tax is raised to 20% we’re still looking at 36,000 lap dances a year. That’s a lot of hip wriggling.
Snowden the owner of the Tally-Ho strip club is rather pissed off with this rather blatant method of government revenue raising. The plot thickens as in July 2004, an official from the state tax office sent him a legal opinion stating that lap dance proceeds would not be subject to the sales tax. Surprise surprise, it appears that the tax office has doubled back on its policy and found a loop-hole to extract some further taxes. The latest official response from the taxation department is;
"The department's criteria is that if the dance occurs in a public part of a club, it would not be taxable. However, as a private one-on-one dance in a separate room would be taxable because the club would be charging an admission fee to that particular room."
What is particularly confusing is that Snowden has paid all his taxes on lap dances that have occurred in his VIP suite where the going rate is $65 for 15 minutes of private dancing and $125 for 30 minutes. Where the taxation department is applying the taxes is on the regular bar area lap dances where a patron is charged $30 a song. The girl keeps $20 and the club takes a $10 commission.
Now lets assume that the sales tax in New York is 10% for lack of a more informed guess. If $216,000 is owed on only the $30 lap dances that would equate to around 72,000 lap dances in one financial year. I can’t find the tax departments tactics all that surprising of shocking. It seems they’d jump through hoops to impose the maximum tax rate of any successful operation. What is surprising is the sheer number of lap dances that appears to be occurring in a single establishment in New York. Even if the sales tax is raised to 20% we’re still looking at 36,000 lap dances a year. That’s a lot of hip wriggling.
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