taxes on several satellites.
 "Though never done before in
California, the move is legal, say state and county tax attorneys. That's because, they
say, nobody else is taxing the satellites. ..."
One might want to take a moment to
savor that logic. If it's legal and appropriate to tax something just because no one else
is taxing it, does that mean it's OK to steal a car from a dealership as long as no one
else has bought it yet? To rape a woman as long as she's a virgin?
The eight satellites, launched from
either Cape Canaveral or French Guyana, serve a multitude of functions, from beaming HBO
movies into American homes to speeding up credit card processing for motorists who pay at
unmanned gas pumps. And they "could bring in millions of dollars a year in taxes to
schools and government," the Times goes on.
Fortunately, it appears the aerospace
giant may not take this lying down. Brian Paperny, Hughes vice president of taxes (another
moment of silence, please, in sober contemplation of the fact that such a post is now
necessary), described the company's executives as "very concerned with the concept of
a tax being assessed on a stationary object 22,300 miles away from the Earth,
|
which is residing in a fixed parking slot ... over the equator, far, far away from Los
Angeles County and the borders of California."
Auerbach responds that satellites are
no different from other movable personal property that he has authority to tax -- like
boats, construction equipment and ice skating costumes.
(Yes, in a 1976 case, a judge
determined that the property of the Los Angeles-based Ice Capades could indeed be taxed by
Los Angeles County, even though it spent most of the year "on the road," as it
were.)
"The property in question here
is geostationary," protests Larry Hoenig, a San Francisco attorney representing
Hughes Electronics. "Geostationary satellites sit above the equator in a fixed
position; they do not rotate around the Earth. So the satellites we're talking about here
are not movable property."
A somewhat dangerous distinction,
surely. Shall counties begin to tax aircraft as they fly overhead? Might they even collect
liquor taxes on cocktails poured at 30,000 feet?
For that matter, don't a number of
churches still preach that by doing good deeds, their parishioners are piling up
"treasure in heaven"? Whether or not said treasure is technically located |
