Gamertell

An increasing number of legislators seem to be gunning after video games - especially when they are short on political agendas - and Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach is among them. However, Erpenbach has no issues with the sale of violent games to children or the alleged perverting effect of such games on them. All he wants is to levy a nominal, harmless tax on video games to fund a new juvenile justice program.

Erpenbach has authored the new Wisconsin tax bill that proposes to levy a 1% surcharge on the sale of each games and game consoles. The funds will then be used to transfer 17 year old kids, who have been charged with non-violent crimes, to the juvenile system.

Erpenbach estimates the cost to be huge, and it might indeed be huge with state records pointing at 30,000 17-year-old kids being arrested every year and, more importantly, 98% of them are charged with petty offenses.

Jon Erpenbach does have his reasons for singling-out video games for this new tax-for-a-noble-cause bill. Apparently, he feels that since juvenile justice and video games both concern children, the video games industry has an ethical burden of some sort to be the source of funds for the new reforms - the new benchmark of absurdity. This ethical-tax burden should be shouldered by other industries also. Why just the game industry? Kids even watch a lot of movies so why not impose a tax on movies as well.

Read [WISC-TV]