LAS VEGAS, NV — Although the American mythos has effectively erased many of the contributions that brothels and brother workers made to the civilization and development of the frontier, the spirit of civic pride is still alive, if a recent offer by representatives of the Nevada brothel system are any indication. They want to pay more taxes.
In a state struggling to accommodate new growth, high rates of homeowner defaults and decreased gambling revenue, finding new sources of tax money isn’t just important, it’s vital. With the brothels earning about $50 million per year and paying only $100 for a business license, their silk pockets seem ripe for the plucking – especially if they’re offering the contents of them up.
According to the New York Times, lobbyist and Nevada Brothel Association director George Flint has been hounding the legislature for months asking for a per-transaction entertainment tax for the state’s 25 legal brothels.
“I am a voice crying out in the wilderness,” Flint complains. “It’s not going to make a hell of a lot of money, but we would be happy to pay our fair share. We can’t even get a hearing. The speaker of the House told me ‘As bad as it is, I don’t think we want to go there.’”
Given that increasingly socially conservative Nevada, which cracks down viciously on street prostitution, became the only state to allow brothel-based prostitution in 1971, it’s also the only state that can “go there,” however much it may prefer taxing regular businesses. Oddly, although the state has licensed 225 women as brothel workers, it refuses to allow men to offer sexual services.
Flint and those he represent fear that the growth of the state and its move toward ever more socially conservative ways of thinking means that it has lost its sense of frontier freedom. Therefore, being taxed could serve the industry as “something of an insurance policy” against eventual banishment.
Given the fact that Nevada is a state in economic crisis, its reluctance to tax a perfectly legal industry begging for more taxation is indeed odd. A budget submitted by Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons included 6-percent pay cuts for teachers and a 36-percent reduction in higher-education financing, both in a state not exactly famous for its education system as it stands now. Gibbons, toeing the old-school Republican line of no tax increases, saw his proposal rejected by both the Senate and the House.
The Times reports that state speaker Barbara Buckley is cool on the idea of taxing brothels because she believes it would require that prostitution be legalized in other counties, something she does not support.
Democratic Senator Bob Coffin disagrees, opining that a “legal backdoor” exists that would allow the state to tax brothels without expanding their range.
Unsurprisingly, not all brothel owners are wild about the idea of paying taxes. Moonlite Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof, for instance, insists that he is already the “highest private taxpayer in Lyon County” and can’t imagine why anyone would even “consider another layer of tax on me. It’s unbearable in this economy.” Hof claims to spend $78,000 a year for his county business license and another $25,000 a year to the local health department.
Hof has long been disassociated from Flint and the Nevada Brothel Association.
