A Taxing Tautology

Because if you didn’t buy counterfeit goods, then we would have more police to investigate the selling of counterfeit goods:

The city is poised to unveil a campaign to educate tourists and locals alike about the harsh realities of supporting the counterfeit goods industry, which officials say costs the city more than $1 billion in lost sales taxes each year.

Beginning Monday, posters adorned with messages that relay the lesser-known perils of counterfeiting will be plastered on phone booth kiosks in areas of the city infamous for harboring peddlers of fake name-brand goods, such as Chinatown and Times Square, officials announced yesterday.

Unveiled at the Harper’s Bazaar Anticounterfeiting Summit, the posters warn shoppers about the harmful consequences of counterfeiting with messages such as “when you buy counterfeit goods, you support child labor.”

Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler announced the two-month campaign in front of a room of executives from businesses wounded by counterfeiting, an industry experts say generates upward of $650 billion a year. He said the sales tax lost to counterfeit goods would provide the city with funds to hire 10,000 new police officers, firefighters, or teachers.

“This is a problem that is a little like weeds, we need to keep pulling them out,” he said.

Except that . . . if all sales taxes only generate $4.5 billion for the city budget (see, for example, this .pdf from the city’s Independent Budget Office), is it really possible that New York City is losing $1 billion in revenue from counterfeit bags? Doesn’t that basically mean that counterfeit bags account for 25% of all sales in the entire city? (Geez, maybe New York really has become the Tijuana of the U.S.)

This is not to say that buying counterfeit goods is some kind of harmless, victimless crime — I don’t believe it is — but, again, what is the city doing carrying the water for the fashion industry? Don’t the police have better things to do? And citing “lost sales taxes” isn’t enough . . . if that were true then we should crack down on all sorts of things . . .