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The last link is very recent and enlightening regarding bands who only play MB occasionaly...
"City spokesperson Pat Dowling didn’t have specific numbers but said entertainers who are house bands or who perform on a consistent basis within the city should have a business license.
North Myrtle Beach is known for having a number of live music venues, especially those featuring beach music bands.
Dowling said visiting bands who just pop into town periodically don’t have to obtain a business license."
I was never talking about a "tour". I was simply talking about a regional bar band (the likes of which probably 80% of forum members here play in) and it's likely geographical coverage area.
For almost 10 years I played for a living. My band played the Mid-Atlantic states from DC to Atlanta from Eastern TN to the coast. We did a couple hundred shows a year in over a hundred towns per year. Hell the paperwork alone would be prohibitive! We would have had to hire a secretary just to get individual licenses for each town and renew it each year.
Yeah for more than a dozen obvious reasons and probably dozens I can't think of off the top of my head this is dumb. And if you had to pay $100 to every Township you got customers from you would hate it too, unless you own a tiny company that never leaves your region.
In our state, you don't need a license to play in a location, but wherever your business is located -- where your house is in most cases -- is where you need to get the BPOL and pay income taxes
I recall something similar (proposed) in Philly a couple years ago. It did not get very far though. This one sounds like it snuck in under the radar.
There was an effort made to require musicians to have business licenses in the Seattle area some years back. The local entertainment agencies banded together and fought it. Their argument was that musicians fall under the same category as writers, poets and public speakers. They argued that if musicians should be required to have a business license, then so should published writers who do public book signings, published poets who read their poetry in book stores or elsewhere, and public speakers (ex politicians) who receive a speaking fee. The verbiage was something like "the nature of the service rendered". This exempted any of these services from being required to obtain a business license. the booking agents prevailed.
I looked into getting a business license back in the eighties and was told by my accountant not to. He said it would open a can of worms that would be difficult to sort out with a band. A few things that he mentioned that I remember were the additional local excise taxes that I would have to pay, and the possibility of having to pay unemployment tax for each musician that worked in my band. He said the only advantage would be that I could cash checks made out in the band's name. The negatives far outweighed the positives. I'm a little vague on the details since it was so long ago.
Didn't someone just post a link describing situations where you would be exempt from this if you went to Myrtle beach?
When we hit the road and did that we just operated under an LLC and kept up on our paperwork and come tax season we actually benefited from everything. I'd also have my accountant take my portion of the bands tax matters and filed it along with my other businesses tax returns.
We did have a manager though who really was the one that handled everything.
The ONLY thing that matters is how the law is written. What a city spokesperson has to say carries no weight.
What if there is a new mayor in town and he/she wants to enforce the letter of the law? At that point, the ONLY thing that matters is how the law is written.
Turns out my perception was completely wrong! Everything below is true (my opinion / impression of truth) except that the Albemarle Supervisors are all Democrats except for one Independent. I did vote for Sheffield and he's in there now. I still think they are making a mistake by targeting us self-employed folks instead of looking for real revenue further up the income chain, but I did vote for one of the people who is doing this to me now.
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The "no new tax" Republicans are in charge of our county, and I sure as heck didn't vote for them. (Not true, no R's left, and the guy I voted for is on the board) This is how they plan to get more revenue without levying new taxes or changing the property tax rate. They can't muck with the assessments for more revenue because they just did that a few years ago.
For my druthers they should extract all the new income they want from the top end of the tax scale because those people are not paying a much higher rate than I am. I strongly favor progressive tax schemes for many reasons.
What they really mean is keeping taxes low on the upper income brackets, and now they are faced with the dubious proposition of trying to balance their books off of the backs of local musicians and other self-employed folks.
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Quite true. The law in question here has been on the books for some time, but musicians and probably a bunch of other groups of semi-professional have been ignored. Now they want to squeeze these folks a bit harder, so are beginning to apply the letter of the law to the more active resident musicians. Who knows when they'll decide to also tax drop-in musicians as well. If the city really isn't interested in taxing touring musicans, they need to ammend this law.
I do not think this should really be perceived too much in this way because from a political stand point Democrat leaders view all business as generally not favorable, and individual rights as more important to their party, and Republican leaders would take it as big business as what should be listened too, as their priories are more in line with the overall view of the party at the expense of the small businesses. This should actually be viewed as a case where this municipality is willing to carry this out until the residents and businesses would need to feel enough economic and social pain to rescind this law.
That's the beauty of ambiguous laws. Each minion charged with enforcement sees it differently so until it gets a legal challenge the law will be whatever the individual asking to see your pickers license says it is.
Do comped drinks and/or food equate to payment? What if a club owner wanted to swap you a gift card for a couple sets?
Because it is such a picayune chicken guano example of poorly written legalese targeted at people not predisposed to challenging it, the end result will be less live music in SC until some closet player who happens to be an attorney by day takes it on as a labor of love. At that point i have little doubt it would simply be killed rather than any attempt made to rewrite it, but until then i'd say if you play in public in SC, be prepared to fork over a C note if this passes.
Hell no!
And Arlo would have lampooned the whole situation.
"You can get anything you want at Alice's Resturant... exceptin' Alice... and live music.
Since when did making a living become a "privilege"? I remember when not having a visible means of support was called vagrancy until the Supreme Court stepped in.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
I have no problem with businesses being required to have a license with the city - I have two businesses - a baseball bat business and a law office, and both are registered. But I don't think weekend warrior musicians should be taxed, unless they base it on the amount of money earned. Of course, then people would not be stuffing cash into their pockets - and we all know NO ONE here does that - right? At the risk of getting political, everyone should be playing by the same rules. Some here get on others for their tax payment practices, while not doing the same.
