Fresh off his demands for higher corporate and income taxes in Maryland, as well as his push for the set-up of “special taxing districts” locally, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich has set his sites on taxing music – be it recorded or live.
“People are playing music for free every day. People are consuming live or recorded music for free every hour. It isn’t fair. And unlike democratic Cuba down south under my good friend Raul Castro, we don’t have a Ministry of Arts and Culture here in MoCo, so we really don’t know what kind of messages are being communicated,” said the disheveled County Exec as he walked to his EV after a meeting in Rockville.
“An ideal situation would be for us to have a Ministry of Arts and Culture and approve each and every song that gets disseminated to the general public here in MoCo. We then want a very modest, fair, 10-cent listener fee for every time the recorded music gets played.”
“Taxing live music acts would be easy to do.” Elrich continued. “We simply need to hire an army of ‘music auditors’ who attend every live show in the County and who ensure collection of the fee for every song played to an audience. In addition, we’ll ensure our karaoke clubs pay their fair share as well. Just because you are singing someone else’s pre-recorded song doesn’t make you immune from the tax. Government doesn’t need to live within its means – we are demigods sent here to command and control your utopia. We have to fund this utopia a myriad of ways. We don’t want to become Northern Virginia.”
When asked if he’d need state lawmaker approval before instituting the per-song tax, Elrich noted he would have to consult with lawyers.
“After being in office 35+ years, I am confident that we have the authority to do this, for the betterment of our salaries, I mean, community.”
YES THIS POST IS PARODY (although dangerously close to reality under tax-hiking CE Marc Elrich) — Stay tuned for the next CleanSlateMoCo Onion edition storyline.
