North Carolina lawmakers want to place a 50% tax on pornographic materials
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- North Carolina lawmakers proposed a 50% excise tax on pornographic or prurient material.
- Sixty percent of tax revenue would go to the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission.
- Bill empowers the secretary to decide when to levy and whether to tax sales or receipts.
North Carolina lawmakers on Tuesday proposed implementing a 50% excise tax on pornography or other “prurient material” to fund efforts to stop human trafficking and domestic violence.
The bill, Senate Bill 1007, would apply to any materials deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors” and would empower the secretary of revenue to determine when it is necessary to levy the tax and whether to apply it to the sales price or the seller’s gross receipts.
Of the revenue from the tax, 60% would go to the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission. The remaining 40% would be split evenly between the Domestic Violence Center Fund and the Children’s Advocacy Centers of North Carolina.
At Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, lawmakers questioned exactly what materials would be subject to this tax — and who would decide.
Existing state law defines “obscene material” as anything that depicts or describes sexual conduct in a “patently offensive way” and that “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
Senate Democratic Leader Sydney Batch said that while she supported the notion of an excise tax on such material, she believed the process as currently defined was overly vague.
Given that the bill applies to digital media, Batch questioned whether R-rated TV shows like “Game of Thrones” could make HBO liable for the excise tax.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ted Alexander, a Shelby Republican, said he did not think such an example would rise to the definition of “obscene material.”
“While R-rated movies may be not suggested for minors, I don’t think it would rise to the level of that,” he said.
Batch further noted that online subscription platforms like OnlyFans have channels with pornographic material as well as family-safe channels. She questioned whether an employee at the Department of Revenue have to go through them all to determine which is which.
“I do think that it’s extremely problematic when we have the subjective nature of allowing, as an example, ‘Charlie from Revenue’ to be the one person who determines what is in fact prurient information,” she said.
Alexander said the tax would only apply to obscene material on sites like OnlyFans, but did not specify how that would be determined.
The committee did not vote on the bill Tuesday, but is expected to consider it again this week.
In 2023, the General Assembly enacted a bill that required porn websites to verify all users were 18 years or older. This led some sites to cut off access entirely in North Carolina.
Lawmakers are currently considering a proposal to ban social media for children under the age of 14, with steep penalties for technology companies that violate the law.
