California Governor Gavin Newsom is proposing a new sales tax on digital software and making his point about it in the weirdest way possible. He claims to shop at Best Buy all of the time, but I’m not convinced he’s even used a computer since Windows Vista.
Last week, Newsom took a break from podcasting and shitposting about President Trump to argue that California’s state sales tax of 7.5 percent should apply to software companies too, many of which are based in his state. He tried to point out the absurdity of the loophole with an equally absurd personal anecdote:
As someone who lives near a Best Buy, I’m at Best Buy often. And I’m paying sales tax on a lot of this prewritten software. And then I find out that all my friends that aren’t near a Best Buy, they’re downloading and they are not paying sales tax. How is that fair?
I, too, live near a Best Buy, and I can tell you I’m not in there often at all, despite being someone who makes a living writing about tech-adjacent entertainment. Unless you’re smashing your TV every other week or scalping Pokémon cards, there hasn’t been a reason to hang out at Best Buy for decades.
I’m not sure what “prewritten software” the store is upselling him on, but all of it is now available online and much of it is streamed via subscriptions. I promise you that is what most people are doing, regardless of whether they live near a Best Buy or not.
Newsom’s conception of the store, and tech in general, seems trapped in 2004. That was the year World of Warcraft came out, sporting one of the last iconic box arts for a PC game before the CD-ROM was phased out. It was a glorious time, so I get the nostalgia.