Introduced by State Senator Kelvin Musselman, a Republican, the bill would impose a 7 percent tax on “the sale, distribution, subscription, display, and gross receipts of material harmful to minors that is produced, sold, filmed, originated, or otherwise based in Utah”. If passed, the bill would take effect in May and would also require adult sites to pay a $500 annual fee to the state tax commission. According to the law, money raised from the tax will be used by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services to provide more mental health support to teenagers.
Musselman did not respond to a request for comment.
A new era of American conservatism dominates the political arena, and more US lawmakers are demanding additional restrictions on adult content. In September, Alabama became the first state to impose a porn tax on adult entertainment companies (10 percent) after passage of an age-verification mandate, which requires users to upload an ID or other personal document to verify they are not a minor before viewing sexually explicit material. Pennsylvania lawmakers are also eyeing a bill that would tax consumers an additional 10 percent on “subscriptions and one-time purchases from online adult content platforms,” while already requiring them to pay a 6 percent sales and use tax for purchases of digital products, two state senators wrote in a memo in October. Other states have floated the idea of a porn tax in the past. In 2019, Arizona state senator Gayle Griffin, a Republican, proposed imposing a tax on adult content distributors to help finance the border wall, a key priority during Donald Trump’s first presidential term. So far, 25 US states have passed a form of age verification.
Although efforts to criminalize participants in the sex work industry have been ongoing for years – with new regulations emerging at a time of increased online surveillance and censorship – targeted taxes have failed to gain widespread acceptance as the legality of such laws is debated.
“This kind of porn tax is completely unconstitutional,” says Evelyn Douk, an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School. “It exposes a particular kind of protected speech to adverse treatment, solely because the legislature doesn’t like it – this is what the First Amendment is designed to protect against. Utah doesn’t like porn, but as the Supreme Court confirmed just last year, adults have a perfectly protected right to access it.”
Utah, Alabama and Pennsylvania are among 16 states that have adopted resolutions declaring porn a public health crisis. Utah Governor Gary Herbert tweeted in 2016 after signing the proposal, “We realize this is a bold claim that not everyone will agree on, but it is the absolute truth.” One of Utah’s earliest statewide responses to the spread of adult material occurred in 2001, when it became the first state to create an office for sexually explicit issues by appointing the Obscenity and Pornography Complaint Ombudsman. This position – known as “porn emperor” – was abolished in 2017.
“Age restrictions are a very complex topic that brings with them data privacy concerns and the potential for uneven and inconsistent application across different digital platforms,” Alex Keckis, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub, told WIRED in a previous conversation. In November, the company urged Google, Microsoft, and Apple to implement device-based verification in their app stores and their operating systems. “We have seen many states and countries attempt to impose platform-level age verification requirements, and they all fail to adequately protect children.” To comply with the new era gate mandate, Pornhub currently blocks access to users in 23 states.
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