...yes, it's none other than Spark-e! himself--standing with the OC arts delegation in Assembly Member Jim Silva's Sacramento office. Mr. Silva is standing on the far left (not politically, of course!) in this photo, followed by Sarah Murr, Community Investor, Global Corporate Citizenship, The Boeing Company; moi; Paula Tomei, Managing Director, South Coast Repertory; Dr. Ana Jimenez-Hami, Executive Director, Orange County Children's Therapeutic Arts Center. We were there for 45 minutes, enjoying conversation with Mr. Silva, and we almost missed our plane back to OC!
Top of our list was to persuade him to support AB 700--The Creative Industries Revitalization Act, which will allocate a small portion of existing tax on purchases of art & musical instruments to be reinvested in the nonprofit arts community.
For more information on AB 700, please go here now and use the built-in mechanism to register your support with your state representatives!
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4 comments:
From all sales or just art & musical instruments? I read the text and it looks like it's all sales.
The State Board of Equalization has identified two business categories from which the sales tax would be allocated. This includes art supplies (e.g. Michael's & Aaron Brothers), musical instruments, sheet music and related products (e.g. Guitar Center) and the sale of art from galleries. I think there are probably other items in those categories as well. It is definitely NOT a portion of all sales tax. The authors believed that it made sense to take a portion of these "arts" business categories to reinvest in the arts because artists are customers and employees, arts organizations are customers and arts education trains artists and employees. It's been calculated that it will return sales tax to the state beyond what is allocated, too.
Also, this is not a NEW tax...it's 20% of the existing sales tax from those categories, and ONLY after funds have been deducted for distributions to local municipalities. It's expected to generate about $30 million a year--not a lot of money, but better than the $5 million or so currently generated by arts license plate sales.
Thanks for commenting & PS, planning to come to Artery's opening tomorrow!
Thanks, Rick.
Awesome, see you then!
Be sure and track me down and say hi! :)
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