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Gavin Newsom proposes a California digital software tax
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Tax the rich you coward!!
Seriously though, is he trying to fire a salvo in some BS culture war battle? Maybe he thinks taxing software will effectively tax ai?
He works for billionaires. This is just a virtue signal to make it look like he could be taxing AI when really it's a regressive tax that would hurt poor people the most and further save his voter base: billionaires.
So he will never push a genuine wealth tax, but he will push red herrings.
Yeah, taxing the average consumer more but refusing to tax billionaires is regressive and dumb as hell. Newsom is a sellout
The exemption on silicon valley's sales tax is a defacto subsidy of billionaires.
Why stop there? food stamps are a subsidy for corporate ag. Public roads are a subsidy for big oil. And schools are a subsidy for all the companies that don't educate their workers. Wow, we are very smart of have realized this
Damn sounds like we need some good old fashioned communism so we make sure the subsidies are going to the people rather than some rich egomaniacs hedge fund
Remember that when he's asking you to vote for him over some MAGA.
This is mostly a tax in video games. Basically it's an attack on steam.
I'm in California. If I but a game(software) I pay tax if I do it at Best buy. If I buy it on steam I pay no sales tax.
I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of all software bought in stores is just video games.
Steam already charges a state sales tax, so this isn't at Steam. There are a lot of other smaller online stores that don't bother with state taxes though.
That's only partly correct. Steam only charges a state sales tax for states that require sales tax on its purchases. CA does not impose state sales tax on digital products, so Steam does not charge CA residents a sales tax on purchases. This is aiming to level the playing field for brick and mortar stores as well as make more money (from normal people instead of taxing billionaires).
That's interesting, I've seen it in multiple states and just assumed it was the standard at this point. Is CA late to the game on this because so many of the online companies lobbied against it hard in their home state?
I'm not sure, but that sounds likely. We have Silicon Valley, which contains billionaires who think they are more important than other people and have no problem saying stupid stuff like, "taxing digital products will cost jobs and move companies out of CA."
Anything but that!