Dutch Sex Industry Now Legal--and Taxable
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AMSTERDAM — People in the Netherlands spend about as much on sex as they do on flowers, but it wasn’t until Tuesday that Parliament made the sex industry as legal--and as taxable--as tulips.
The 150-member Parliament revoked a law prohibiting pimping. Previously, individual prostitutes could sell sex but could not be organized legally in brothels. Authorities had tolerated brothels, however, to monitor the trade.
The government now has a greater opportunity to tax the sex business, which takes in an estimated $830 million a year, according to the Meester de Graaf Foundation, a government-financed center for prostitution research.
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