Portland streaming tax: Could Netflix and Spotify fund live arts? – oregonlive.com:
Portland Council President Jamie Dunphy will pursue a series of proposals intended to reform and reshape the city’s perennially loathed arts tax — and also create a new, separate surcharge to bolster live performances.
In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Dunphy said he believes the city’s 13-year-old levy on residents to support arts education in public schools and organizations citywide is outdated, poorly administered and in need of change.
The arts tax is, in fact, “outdated, poorly administered and in need of change.” That much is true.
He also said he wants Portland city government to raise millions of additional dollars each year to exclusively support music, dance and theater productions by imposing a fee on streaming service giants such as Netflix and Spotify.
It is unclear to me that government should be taxing and spending millions of dollars per year to support music, dance and theater productions. Is that what government is for?
The annual $35 tax on any Portland adult with an income of $1,000 or more and living in a household above the poverty line has long been an object of annoyance and scorn among some city residents and even arts groups that benefit from it.
Frustration has further magnified in recent weeks after OPB revealed that the city has been quietly sitting on $9 million in unspent arts dollars even as arts organizations last year saw their funding from the program drop by nearly 50%.
Why do you need more money if you have $9 million unspent? Either spend it or lower the tax.
Money collected through the voter-approved tax, about $12 million annually, goes to fund arts and music education in the six school districts serving Portland plus public art in the city.
Oregon spends over $18,000 a year per student. That’s more than enough if spent well.
Dunphy said that, as a first order of business, he will seek to steer a portion of the money currently in reserve toward “backfilling” some of the recent funding reductions experienced by nonprofits. He estimated the proposed outlay to be about $1.5 million annually over the next two years.
Still, you have $9 million sitting there already.
…Lastly, Dunphy said he will pursue a new city tax on streaming entertainment services akin to one that’s existed in Chicago for more than a decade. The new surcharge, which Dunphy said he hopes could raise as much as $10 million annually, would be earmarked exclusively for supporting live art performances citywide.
Live art performances are, once again, not the role of government generally, but more to the point this surcharge won’t be paid the likes of Netflix or Spotify. They’ll simply do what they did in Chicago and pass the tax along the to the consumer.