It was reported last month New York state floated a proposal by Democratic Gov. David Paterson for taxes on digital downloads as an effort to close the "digital property taxation loophole" as part of a bigger $121 billion budget plan, and now North Carolina is on board too.
Now in in the proposition stage with their own state sales tax for all digital purchases (it's not known if DLC would be affected or not), N.C. is hoping to boost its balance sheet:
"We used to think of everything in terms of being tangible. Nobody thought of how you could possibly download anything," said North Carolina State Rep. Paul Luebke (D-Durham) explained to the local News 14. "So if you buy a book in a bookstore, you're going to have to pay sales tax on it. If you're downloading a book from a book seller, you should have to pay sales tax on that as well."It's still in the rough stages, but researchers estimate taxing music, video games, movies, books and software downloads would produce about $12 million for them during the next fiscal year.
"We would be concerned about any kind of new taxes in this economy," Brooks Raiford, president and CEO of the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA), told the station. "The consumer is already very highly taxed, the economy is stretched. All we're asking is that those considerations be taken carefully and that the industry be asked for their input as the legislation is finalized."The NCTA represents Cary, N.C.-based Epic games, among other game-related companies. Interestingly, not long ago Epic releases a good portion of their Unreal catalogue on Poland-based website Good Old Games, which seems to be exempt from the taxes, unlike Canada and United Kingdom-based operations.
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