Writing Taxed as Home Business in L.A.

“Are Writers More Equal Than Others?” (Commentary, Sept. 8), by Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Assn., asserts that writers who work at home expect special privileges.

I have been a writer of fiction for some years, and I work at home. I did not know, however, that I was supposed to register with the city clerk’s office as a home-based business and pay a city business tax until I read about it in The Times last April. Then I learned that a writer working at home must pay an annual $25 registration fee plus a minimum tax of $106.43, which would be increased to the tune of $5.91 per $1,000 for everything over $18,000.

In 1997, from Jan. 1 to the end of July, I earned nothing. Then in August a New York publisher hired me to do some freelance work on one of its manuscripts. The bill I submitted was for $656, which has not as yet been paid. It is likely that I will earn nothing more this year. I still paid the $25 registration fee by Sept. 5, and the basic tax of $106.43, which I would have had to pay even if I earned nothing during the entire year.

Am I expecting special privileges by objecting to paying the same tax for any earned amount between nothing and $18,000? I would love to earn $18,000!

CAROL RUSSELL LAW

Los Angeles

How audacious can one be? Fox answers that question for us when he waxes on taxes and their lack of equity. Jarvis’ Prop. 13 singles out and protects some who pay less than their fair share of property taxes while penalizing others. Just? Fair? I think not. Fox has the temerity to cite our “seminal” document’s “All men are created equal.” If he had also mentioned the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the law” I would have been even more upset.

It’s incredible that Fox apparently fails to detect his hypocritical inconsistency.

CHARLES R. BARR

Upland

The Los Angeles City Council’s desire to tax home-based writers and other creative artists is missing a crucial point (Sept. 9).

Yes, the solitary spinners of creative content are low-impact home professionals compared to service providers such as accountants and psychologists, who draw a stream of clients to their home offices, but more importantly, creative artists function at the opposite end of the economic pipeline. Service providers deal with the financial or emotional results of human activity. Writers and creative artists operate at inception, unleashing a vision and spark which churns through the economy, driving the productivity of studios, publishers, galleries and eventually even account- ants and psychologists.

The writers and artists of Los Angeles put many of us to work and the vast majority are meagerly paid for the favor. Taxing them away to New York, or Montana, or whatever other location better values their gift, will hurt no entity more than our city government, when it loses the taxes from the economic activity that follows.

CHAD TEW

Program Manager

UCLA Extension Writers Program