Source: Orange County Register
by David Williams
“Cities across California, from Sacramento to Santa Barbara to Glendale, have been paying consultants and a lobbying firm to figure out ways to raise taxes on their residents who use video streaming and conferencing services like Hulu, Netflix, or Zoom. Avenu Insights, which uses the benign moniker ‘revenue enhancement’ in place of tax increases, has raked in millions of dollars advising cities on how to apply legacy utility user taxes (UUTs) — meant for cable television, water, and electricity — to online services. Your tax dollars at work — paying consultants and lobbyists to help raise your taxes. Avenu Insights sells an appealing narrative to cities. Local governments are ‘losing’ revenue as residents cut the cord …. The firm helps cities ‘recover’ that revenue by simply changing the definition of ‘utility’ to include everything from Netflix to Microsoft Teams.” (10/15/24)