$5 Texas pole tax + $5 Houston pole tax = $10.

shadowcat
Atlanta suburb
HOUSTON—Strip clubs in Houston will be forced to pay a $5 fee for each customer under an ordinance passed by the mayor and city council.

Money generated by the fee will help pay for processing a backlog of more than 4,000 untested rape kits.

Lawyers representing the topless bar industry vowed to fight in court. They also argued Houston needs to come up with another way to pay for processing rape kits because the court fight will delay collection of the strip club fee.

The new ordinance is patterned after a state law, both of which were backed by Ellen Cohen, a former state representative who's now a Houston city council member. Cohen, a former head of the Houston Area Women's Center, has been especially outspoken on the backlog of unprocessed rape kits.

The fee would also apply to some bars that occasionally offer sexually oriented entertainment like wet T-shirt events or “naked sushi contests.”

The ordinance specifies that other bars will have to pay the $5 per customer fee only on days when they hold those promotional events.

14 comments

  • deogol
    •
    12 years ago
    Should be making regular bars pay this. 25 cents a bottle of beer or something like that. Associating this business with rape is bad form.

    Of course, if the brewers hear about such a thing, they would throw so much money into making a mockery of it, it would have never have passed.
  • samsung1
    •
    12 years ago
    good points deogol.

    How do they collect the pole tax? Do they add this charge onto the cover charge? Maybe TUSCL should have a feature to alert us of a club having to pay a pole tax. Now a $10 cover charge will be more like a $20 cover charge if this Houston and Texas tax are collected at the door.
  • Rabbit21
    •
    12 years ago
    This is going to be a trend. A sin tax on an unpopular industry with lots of causal assumptions linking it to social ills. This fun has just started I'm afraid, look at what happened to Cigarette's.
  • Alucard
    •
    12 years ago
    "look at what happened to Cigarette's."

    It was a very good thing to ban smoking in Clubs & bars. And to tax Cigarette's Highly!
  • inno123
    •
    12 years ago
    So here is an interesting question. The tax apparently applies only to clubs that serve alcohol.

    Would you be more inclined to visit a juice and soda place if the cover charge was ten dollars less?
  • Alucard
    •
    12 years ago
    I don't let a cover charge decide FOR me what club I was to visit. If there is a cover charge I make sure I have the money to pay it, no matter how high or low that fee is.
  • deogol
    •
    12 years ago
    "It was a very good thing to ban smoking in Clubs & bars. And to tax Cigarette's Highly!"

    Think about that a little. The banned part.

    All the government did was make a freedom available to those who can afford it. I don't think we want a country where if you can pay for a freedom fee to the government, you can have it.
  • georgmicrodong
    •
    12 years ago
    "It was a very good thing to ban smoking in Clubs & bars. And to tax Cigarette's Highly!"

    I just love people who love liberty, unless "liberty" turns out to mean someone else choosing not to give them what they want.
  • Rabbit21
    •
    12 years ago
    I don't smoke and I like coming home with my clothes not reeking of cigarette smoke. That doesn't mean I approve of the ban or am untroubled by it's implications. IMHO you can't really be for banning Cigarette's and then get all huffy about "legislating morality".
  • jackslash
    •
    12 years ago
    I would expect the clubs to charge the $5 or $10 tax to the customer at the door, making the entrance fee to the club more expensive. The clubs may want to charge the tax and their own cover charge separately in order to let the customers know who they're paying the money to. The customers will then blame the government, not the club, for the increased cost.

    I think this type of tax will spread to almost every state. The state and local governments will get more revenue and the tax burden will not hit most citizens, just the creeps who visit strip clubs.

    I don't like sin taxes that I have to pay. Of course, I don't mind the taxes on cigarettes because I don't smoke.
  • samsung1
    •
    12 years ago
    clubs will probably promote with free admission coupons that will waive the cover but not the tax, similar to clubs with coupons that will waive the cover but not the mandatory drink charge at the door (aka the old deja vu in cincinnati)
  • LeeH
    •
    12 years ago
    Another article says: "Supporters ... contend that strip clubs should shoulder some of the costs of rape investigations because the establishments can cultivate unhealthy attitudes toward women ..."

    So it's all Dougster's fault.
  • carl95
    •
    12 years ago
    Hey, I thought the 24th Amendment banned pole taxes. Someone call the AG!
  • gatorjoe2
    •
    12 years ago
    OK so they have a 4,000 rape kits to be processed. I am sure this takes time and money. Wikipedia suggests that a rape kit costs about 800 dollars.(If anybody has a better idea, let me know) So we are talking about 3.2 million dollars. Honestly that seems a small amount considering the size of Texas.

    Texas has 212 strip clubs, divide the total cost by them, it is down to 15K a year, divide that by 52 weeks, it is about 300 a week, which means 60 customers a week and they can pay this.

    I know some small clubs will be killed by this, but the large clubs could pay this in no time.

    My question is what happens when the rape kits are gone? What will they use the tax for then?

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