$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.â€
The ordinance specifies that other bars will have to pay the $5 per customer fee only on days when they hold those promotional events.
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.â€
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
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.
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.
It was a very good thing to ban smoking in Clubs & bars. And to tax Cigarette's Highly!
Would you be more inclined to visit a juice and soda place if the cover charge was ten dollars less?
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.
I just love people who love liberty, unless "liberty" turns out to mean someone else choosing not to give them what they want.
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.
So it's all Dougster's fault.
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?