video streaming Archives

Fatally Flawed? Illinois Municipal League’s Model Streaming Subscription Tax

The Illinois Municipal League (IML) represents the interests of 219 home rule municipalities in Illinois.[1] The IML recently released a revised draft model, “Municipal Streaming Tax Ordinance,” (the model) for use by the home rule municipalities in imposing an “amusement tax” on, inter alia, music and video streaming services and online gaming.[2] If the subscriber’s residential street address is within the corporate limits of the municipality, the subscription fee would be subject to the tax.[3] However, the tax proposed by the model has at least two fatal flaws: it is barred by the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) as a discriminatory tax on electronic commerce and is an unconstitutional extraterritorial tax under the home rule article of the Illinois Constitution.[4]

NATURE OF THE STREAMING TAX

The model proposes a tax on the privilege of viewing an amusement, including electronic amusements that either “take place within the” municipality or are delivered to subscribers “with a primary place of use within the jurisdictional boundaries of” the municipality.[5] The model incorporates the definition of “place of primary use” from the Illinois Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Conformity Act.[6] That statute requires sourcing to the subscriber’s “residential street address.”[7] The streaming tax operates like a familiar sales tax in that it is imposed on the subscriber but collected by the streaming provider and remitted to the municipality.[8] The model tax would also be imposed on “paid television programming” (sat TV), but not paid radio programming (sat radio), transmitted by satellite.[9] The tax is not imposed on transactions that confer “the rights for permanent use of an electronic amusement” on the customer.[10]

THE NATURE OF MUSIC AND VIDEO STREAMING AND ONLINE GAMING SUBSCRIPTIONS

There are many service providers that allow internet access to the databases of music, videos and games (content). Customers typically enter into an automatically renewing subscription agreement with the provider that allows access to a database such that the subscriber can “stream” the content from any fixed or mobile device with internet connectivity. Subscribers are able to access the content from anywhere at anytime so long as their subscription is current and they have internet access.

Because the subscription fees are paid in advance, there is no way for either the provider or the subscriber to know where and when the subscriber might access the content, if at all, during the month. Also, because the streaming tax proposed under the model is on the subscription fee, the tax must be collected before any streaming occurs. It may be that the subscriber doesn’t access the content either from within the corporate limits of the municipality or at all during the subscription period.

FATAL FLAWS

1. Barred Discriminatory Tax on Electronic Commerce

The ITFA generally bars state and local taxes that discriminate against electronic commerce.[11] A tax discriminates against electronic commerce if it is imposed on transactions that occur over the internet but not [...]

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Chicago Mayor’s Tax-Heavy Budget Passes: Lease and Amusement Tax Implications

Last week the Chicago City Council approved Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2016 revenue ordinance as part of his tax-laden budget proposal. The revenue ordinance included noteworthy changes to the personal property lease transaction tax (lease tax) and amusement tax, both of which we have covered in-depth since the Department of Finance (Department) issued two rulings over the summer officially extending a nine percent tax to most services provided online. The portions of the revenue ordinance related to the lease tax were drafted in response to the concerns raised by the startup community. As discussed in more detail below, the lease tax amendments provide little relief for the vast majority of businesses dreading the January 1st effective date of the ruling. The amendments to the amusement tax provide no relief whatsoever.

Chicago Lease Tax Amendment

The changes to the Lease Tax Ordinance include: (1) a narrowly defined exemption for small businesses; (2) a reduction of the rate for cloud-based services where the customer accesses its own data; and (3) codification of the applicability of the Illinois mobile telecom sourcing rules. The amendments were touted by the mayor as addressing many of the concerns expressed by small businesses after the Department administratively interpreted the nine percent lease transaction tax to apply to most cloud-based services in June. In response to an outcry from the startup community, the Department subsequently delayed the effective date of the ruling to January 1, 2016. Unfortunately the mayor’s solution falls short of providing any significant relief and will not alleviate the concerns of the vast majority of customers and providers affected by the ruling.

Effective immediately upon publication, the lease transaction amendments approved yesterday will:

Exempt “small new businesses” that are lessors or lessees of non-possessory computer leases from their respective lease transaction tax collection and payment obligations. For this purpose, “small new business” is a business that (1) holds a valid and current business license issued by the city or another jurisdiction; (2) during the most recent full calendar year prior to the annual tax year for which the exemption provided by this subsection is sought had under $25 million in gross receipts or sales, as the term “gross receipts or sales” is defined for federal income tax purposes; and (3) has been in operation for fewer than 60 months. For the purpose of calculating the $25 million limit, gross receipts or sales will be combined if they are received by members of a single unitary business group. This will exclude most subsidiaries from taking advantage of the “small new business” exemption.
Reduce the rate from nine percent to 5.25 percent of the lease or rental price in the case of the non-possessory lease of a computer primarily for the purpose of allowing the customer to use the provider’s computer and software to input, modify or retrieve data or information that is supplied by the customer.
Codify the use of the sourcing rules set forth in the Illinois [...]

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