News You Can't Use: Judge Nixes Nutter Administration Attempt To Tax Lap Dances at Strip Clubs

Sleazy thrills are the bread and vegetables of the psyche and as such, logically, should be as equally resistant to taxation as their physical counterparts. The right to "back rooms," "You'll get more grinding for an extra $10" and quasi-prostitution in general has recently come under fire from over-reaching Big Government, kicking off yet another quiet battle for the nation's soul.

It's going down in Philadelphia, until now mostly known for its freeway killers and the time when a rapper was spun like a human propeller, necessitating a fear-based parental decision to move him to an elite West Coast neighborhood. Now it will also be remembered as the place where "Mayor Nutter," who quite frankly sounds like a character in an XXX-rated City Council-themed VHS from the nineties, waged a losing battle against our freedom to exchange cash for crotch friction without having to pay a "Stamp Act" type punitive tax.

The Nutter administration has lost in its legal battle to tax lap dances performed in the back rooms of strip clubs.

Time to sign that unconditional surrender in the back room of the battleship Missouri. 

Lawyers for the city had gone before Common Pleas judge Ellen Ceisler, arguing that the city’s Tax Review Board last year was wrong when it said the city’s amusement tax was too vague to be applied to lap dances.

You've got to love the idea of an "amusement tax." "Hey, you with that smile on your face! Either stop being happy or pay the government!"

“If the city wants to tax lap dances, they can go to City Council, ask City Council to amend the ordinance, and they can start imposing a tax on lap dances. Or anything else they want: karaoke songs, piano playing.  Anything they want.  But you have to put it in the ordinance. You just can’t make it up as you go along.”

You can do anything you want, but first you have to get it past a body of faceless suits in a hearing no one knows or cares about. That's the correct procedure. Just make sure your speech is short.

Club Risqué and Cheerleaders, represented by Bochetto, faced tax bills totaling nearly $900,000. A third club, Delilah’s, was assessed more than $630,000 in back taxes, interest, and penalties for lap dances.

Fortunately the Sin Industry is the only growth industry left in America other than credit card debt and stripping copper wires, so it probably could have taken this tyrannical hit.

“I think the courts have essentially borne out our conclusions all along, that the city never really had a good case. The case never really should have even gone this far.”

"Let's celebrate by sitting back from the main stage, slowly nursing a beer and ignoring the repeated requests for "private dances."

Bochetto believes any further effort by the administration to tax lap dances would not sit well in any court.

Which is ironic considering how difficult it is to sit well after one of those "dances."

Please take any keys out of your pockets, keep you arms at your sides and fill out tax form 15158-EZ.

“I think the swiftness of Judge Ceisler’s ruling sends a message to the city that it’s time to give it up,” he said today. “It’s time to call it a day.”

You have suffered a total and complete rout at the hands of the legal representatives of "Cheerleaders." Game Over.

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

What the fffffk? Obumfk has put in place taxes on suntan parlors and a couple other things noteworthy.

Ummm, while true, the implication that conservatives are the patrons of strip clubs is simply inaccurate.

I'd makem say uhhhh.

Getting your news from ABC, NBC,CBS,CNN, MSNBC or NPR is like watching Hogan's Hero's to learn about the Holocaust.

Jessica alba has the #1 pooper, man its FANTASTIC

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