WDUQNews: "A key component of Friday’s budget deal has members of Pennsylvania’s performing arts communities rankled.
Over the course of the summer, Governor Ed Rendell insisted lawmakers should close sales tax loopholes to help overcome a 3.2 billion dollar deficit. During the last day of budget negotiations, leaders agreed to remove the exemption for live theatrical and musical performances."
4 comments:
I am disappointed by the fact that ticket sales will be taxed now. Theater can be viewed as a luxury so yes, perhaps it does make sense, but I find that the arts, more then ever now, should be as accessible to the public as possible. Interestingly enough, I hear sporting event tickets will not be taxed.
When the general public purchases theatre tickets, they are already loaded with all sorts of fees to help offset costs. Anybody who has purchased a ticket from a large company such as TicketMaster is aware that fees for ordering, ticket printing, shipping, etc. can easily add $10-$20 to a ticket price. Now having to pass along this additional sales tax to consumers is going to make buyers even more frustrated. There is potential that you will soon pay more in fees than you will for the actual ticket. One of the benefits of being a non-profit institution are the tax breaks and taking this advantages away is going to hurt some already struggling arts institutions.
I think that this tax will maybe do some damage to ticket sales but i think that people might not rilly care but they might and then the ticke sales would go down. and then that would not help that we are in a reason and some theaters might have trouble the probably wont go under. so theater probably will not hurt because people will probably not notice that there is another 6 percent on there ticket price. so this is might be bad but i dont think this is that bad.
The attitude that theater is a form of entertainment that only the rich have access to still exists, and imposing a sales tax on tickets is going to exacerbate that. I don't understand why they can't impose a tax on tickets to sporting events; I feel like it would be more likely that die-hard fans would shell out the extra cash to see their favorite team play. As a student, it's particularly frustrating, because every time I want to see a show I already have to consider heavily whether I can afford it.
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