New Mexico Following Wisconsin's Lead on Video Game Tax

As the gaming industry and the ESA had feared, other states have jumped on the bandwagon driven by Wisconsin’s Sen. Jon Erpenbach and are proposing new taxes on video games. The latest state is New Mexico; and just as in Wisconsin, the proposal isn’t being sold as a sin tax, but as a way of generating revenue to help youth oriented social programs.

As reported in the Huffington Post, the Sierra Club, a coalition of 12 environmental groups, is pushing for a 1% tax on videogames and TV sets to fund outdoor education programs. The tax proposal could potentially earn$4 million a year for the “Leave no child Inside” program.

“We believe it is such a nominal tax that consumers won’t feel it too much, especially if they are educated about where that money goes,” said Michael Casaus, the New Mexico youth representative of the Sierra Club.

Studies by New Mexico’s State Parks Division have concluded that although 80% of school age children live within a half hour drive of a state park, less than half have ever visited one. The article also sights unspecified studies linking “the increasing amount of time children spend watching television or playing video games to lower academic scores, obesity, and increased attention-deficit disorder.”

First of all, the proposals of both New Mexico’s Sierra Club and Wisconsin’s Sen. Erpenbach are thinly veiled Sin Taxes, pure and simple. In each case, the proposed tax targets a specific group of consumers to fund these programs. The whole concept of children helping children is laughable considering the average age of a gamer is 33. This is just a new potential source of tax revenue.

Thus far, legislators haven’t supported proposals of this type. According to GameDaily, New Mexico rejected a similar proposal in 2007. Maryland has also considered and failed to pass a tax on video arcades last year. I doubt that this will be the last attempt to exploit the misconceptions about gamers, but hopefully it will meet a similar fate as those that have gone before it. These social programs should find a more fair funding source.
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