In order to get some relief to poor Italians, Silvio Berlusconi has revived a porn tax that had the industry up in arms back in 2005 but was never actually implemented.
The Italian treasury estimates a porn tax could raise around €60m (£40m) next year. Daniela Santanche, the National Alliance MP charged with shepherding the budget through its committee stages, said that would allow the government to offer tax breaks for the cost of hiring baby-sitters. ~ Stars cry blue murder over Italy’s porn tax
Here’s what Berlusconi wants, evidently: Sandro Bondi, the Culture Minister, will decide what constitutes explicit or pornographic scenes. I’m thinking of applying for the job of being Sandro’s assistant. We could drink beer together while viewing the films. Four critical eyes on the screen searching for pornographic scenes, watching for money shots that will enable people to hire baby sitters for the times when the children are home alone because they aren’t in school because school hours have been cut because school time is way too expensive and wages are low so everyone has to work resulting in latch-key kids because the cost of baby sitters is so high that parents have to be rescued by Porn films that few will be able to afford because of the extra tax they’d have to pay. Whew.
Imagine, wealthier than average Italians wanting to help their culture will have to consider buying porn flicks so the masses who work hard and earn little will have their children taken care of.
Is something very wrong here? After all, Firefox’s spell checker thinks that “Berlusconi” should be “wanderlust” and just about everyone I’ve talked to in my little Italian village wishes he’d go away.