[quote name='Blaster man']I'd be making a wild guess but these taxes are normally flat taxes based on the number of items you buy like "per pack of cigarette". If it's a flat fee of $5 then people buying games for $60 on release will still buy it. For a CAG hoping to get a game for $10 on Black Friday, they're suddenly going to pay 50% more which in turn means you're going to be buying 50% less games. Games on the cheap/clearance/sale prices are going to WAY more expensive in terms of a percent you're paying.
For something like a small XBLA, PSN, etc game a $5 tax would completely DESTROY the market. Something like the iPhone market would be wiped out too. Could you imagine the Dead Space game or Infinity Blade being made in that kind of climate? What if the tax is $10 a game? Again, COD would be fine but how would something like Darksiders fair? That game only sold 1.3 million and dropped in price quickly, how the hell would they sell that game for $70 and a drop in price to $40 is now a drop in price to $50. The middle of the market is already in really bad shape. A tax like that would bankrupt a bunch of companies (ThQ would certainly have been bankrupt much sooner if a tax on M rated games had been around for the last couple of years).
I should add: I think the chances of a violent video game tax being passed by Congress is very small. It was just announced that the budget deficit is 25% better than they expected and Republican's don't think any tax is a good tax so there will be "no new revenue".[/QUOTE]
Not exactly, like any tax law, the current excise taxes are not really as simple as being flat taxes. For alcohol & tobacco products the taxes
are actually broken down to categories. The maker of the product is told what category they are in and they typically pass that cost on the consumer. Note the tax on firearms, if an excise tax like the one proposed would take effect then this is how they would be forced to do it. A percentage of the game's selling price. As you pointed out prices vary too wildly and there are too many types (console, digital, online, etc.) to control practically any other way. But a percentage tax has been tried and shot down in places like Missouri & Oklahoma. Also with all the focus on the developers/publishers you forget about the distributors. If they did impose a flat $5 tax including digital distribution they would be going directly up against very large & powerful American companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and all their lawyers & lobbyists. I really don't think they want that.
Plus you start to open the horrid can of worms that is actually enforcing something like this. To begin, they are talking taxing "violent" media, so you've already got a huge issue in the the ratings systems for TV, Movies, Games are all very different. That can be worked around, but it also becomes an issue of government control. Neither the MPAA or the ESRB are government-backed organizations. They are simply industry standards ratings board. What happens if either one just decides to change or stop their ratings? Now you've got an excise tax on the books with no way to accurately enforce it. Not too mention that getting your game or movie rated is a strictly voluntary procedure. Right now almost all are simply because many theaters and retailers will not stock your movie/game if it X-rated, Adults Only or in the case of games unrated.
Then there's stepping into the world of digital distribution, unlike movies, there is no theatre in which games go before being digitally disturbed. The fact is that until late last year ESRB had no way of ratings digital games, they built some weird "interactive" ratings system and even now many digital & online games are released without being rated. Infinity Blade is a good example, it's not ESRB rated. Never was and never needs to be. Indie XBLA games are not rated. Regular XBLA are only rated because Microsoft wants them to be. If Microsoft drops that requirement, this tax becomes impotent. Apple, Steam, etc. don't even require ratings. I could probably trudge up more examples but I'm sure the point is there.
Yes the government could go the way of U.S. Bill H.R.287 (google it, scary stuff), which among ridiculous things says "it would be unlawful to commercially distribute, sell, or rent a video game that does not have a rating by the ESRB." Now with that they just land right back in the 1st amendment frying pan... It will be very much like the laws banning the sale of M & AO rated games, shut down for violating that pesky US Constitution.
And all of that doesn't even start in on what will they do with free-to-play online games? Unrated DVDs/Blus, etc.?