On Philly's 'blog tax'

Technically Philly is a blog covering the city's burgeoning technology industries.

By now you've probably heard the reports that the City of Philadelphia is charging bloggers $300 to operate a website.

The story has been republished in the Washington Post, Mashable and other outlets after first being reported by my old employer, the Philadelphia City Paper (though local message board Philadelphia Speaks wrote about this before anyone else). Many of these sources are asserting that the city is targeting bloggers with a new tax.

This is untrue. The city created no new tax and any publication saying otherwise is doing some terrible reporting and any outrage about the anti-blogging attitude of the city is a knee-jerk reaction to some poor research.

Technically Philly, in fact, has paid $300 to the City of Philadelphia. However, this was not for any "blog tax," it was for the business privilege license, a one-time $300 fee required of all businesses in the city.

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