Philadelphia Requires Amateur Bloggers to Pay $300 for "Business Privilege License

Last May, Marilyn Bess sliced open a letter from the city of Philadelphia. She probably assumed she was getting summons or jury duty. That, however, was not the case. She was in for a shock: the City of Brotherly Love had decided that Bess, due to ad revenues generated from her blog, MS Philly Organic, owed her municipal government $300 for a "business privilege license." There was only one problem with that: she only earned $50 through her blog in the past two years. That means that they were asking for 6 times the amount she had even earned for a license that was completely irrelevant.

She was not the only blogger who had this strange thing happen to them. Blogger Sean Barry, of Philadelphia also had this happen to him, however, his blog garnered even less cash: $11 over the past two years. "Personally, I don't think Circle of Fits is a business," he said to the Philadelphian City Paper.

Basically, in Philadelphia, as soon as you have ads on your blog it qualifies as a business. Maybe an unsuccessful business, but a business all the same. The city government requires the $300 license of any an all outfits participating in "activity for profit" -- "whether or not they earned a profit during the preceding year."

This might sound ridiculous, but for some people, it's understandable. If you have a blogger who is earning several thousand dollars monthly, you would expect them to have to pay a bit of money to the government, however, for the average blogger they don't even earn enough in a month to buy a coffee.

Continue reading on the next page.


Some city council people in Philadelphia have proposed a bill that would exempt anyone without a business privilege license from paying city tax on the first $100,000 of profits. That's very far over what the normal blogger earns anyway, so it would makes sense.

The one question that remains is: does this mean kids selling lemonade have to pay for a license as well?

Because, if a blogger who has made $11 in the past two years does, that wouldn't be that absurd in comparison.