Just one week after Utah's House of Representative's passed a "sin tax" on adult entertainment, a similar bill has been introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives.
The Adult Enterprises Excise Tax Acts, as the bill is officially known, seeks to place a tax of 25 percent on all goods and services that are sold, leased, or rented by an "adult enterprise."
Apparently attempting to define adult retailers and strip clubs as "adult enterprises," the bill defines two types of adult enterprise. One is a place that bars entry to anyone under the age of 18 and "allows or permits an entertainer to expose the genitalia, buttocks, or the nipple of female breasts." The second definition is a place that " sells, leases, or rents obscene material."
The first definition can be interpreted as a strip club, but the second definition describes an illegal activity that adult retailers don't engage in.
A portion of the revenue from the tax, if the bill passes and wins the likely court challenges questioning the constitutionality of the tax, will go to the into the victim compensation fund - a tactic that helped the Utah bill pass.
Revenue will also go to the Department of Justice for the purposes of providing grants to care providers providing services to crime victims of domestic abuse or of rape and sexual assault.
