CARSON CITY, Nev. — www.mercedsunstar.com- A plan worked out by Nevada Assembly and Senate negotiators to raise various taxes won’t increase levies on independent contractors – prostitutes and newspaper deliverers, for example.
As lawmakers worked out the details of SB429, some said contractors wouldn’t face higher payroll taxes, but might be added to the list of companies paying higher business license fees. That could have led to all sorts of contract workers paying higher taxes.
“It’s an idea that has solid logic, but at the end of the day becomes problematic,” said Jim Wadhams, lobbyist for a broad range of business clients including the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “Sometimes you end up catching more than you intended.”
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Assembly Taxation Chairwoman Kathy McClain, D-Las Vegas, said the question of which independent contractors would be included complicated decisions on the scope of the tax plan.
“The world’s oldest profession?” McClain said with a laugh, when asked about including prostitutes in the expanded tax. “That’s part of the problem of putting something new like that in there. Who would it include?”
Loden, 29, a sex worker who declined to give her full name, is an independent contractor at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch east of Carson City, in neighboring Lyon County. She says additional fees or taxes for sex workers would be too expensive.
As a sex worker in a legal brothel, Loden is required by state law to undergo tests for sexually transmitted diseases once a week, costing about $70 each time. She said she gives half her income to the brothel, and still makes over $100,000 a year after the split.
“The thing that aggravates us is that we all pay astronomical fees on what we do health-wise,” Loden said. “When you keep slapping on all these additional charges, I just have to say, don’t persecute me because I love sex.”
Some think increasing taxes on sex workers could force more to go underground and work illegally.
“There’s good safety controls to begin with,” Loden said. “You’re your own boss. You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do.”
In previous hearings, brothel lobbyists and sex workers have said they would welcome increased taxes to help solve the state’s revenue shortfall. SB369, a bill that died earlier in the session, would have increased the taxes on services provided in brothels, and would have created an ombudsman for the industry that would have worked to improve safety.
“I have to admire (brothel industry lobbyist ) George Flint for getting up there and saying, ‘Tax us,'” said Jan Gilbert of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. “Why not? Nevada is known for gambling and brothels. I think they’re so afraid of the national image. But what happens in Nevada stays in Nevada. Come on!”
Observers said part of the problem with including independent contractors in the payroll tax is that it would be equivalent to an income tax, which is prohibited by the Nevada Constitution.
An Assembly proposal to double business license fees, AB146, could extend those fees to independent contractors. The proposal would double the business license fee from $100 to $200, and add an additional $200 for each additional business location.
However, a Senate plan that emerged late Tuesday, SB429, worked out by Assembly and Senate negotiators, didn’t include independent contractors. It also doesn’t impose the business license fee on a per-location basis. Under that provision, a chain such as Starbucks would pay more for its license than independent, single-location coffee shops.