"Netflix says it's already making arrangements to add the tax to the cost charged to its Chicago customers." Why would Netflix collect the tax? If they told the city to eat it and collect the tax itself, and figure out for itself who is a subscriber, what could the city do? Ban Netflix from the city? Any time a business has a transaction, they have to collect the tax. Or they could eat it, and pay the government what they owe. Either way, it's part of the deal. If Netflix, cloud services, and other online entertainment simply banned all services to Chicago how long do you think it would be before the citizens of the city showed up at city hall with pitchforks and torches? These services band together and every councillor who voted for the tax would be doomed come next election. Hundreds of thousands of murders and billions of other violent crimes every year (or so I've been told)? Meh. Corrupt local government officials lining their own pockets with taxpayer money and literally digging up corpses and hand-trucking them to the polls to vote for them (or so I've been told)? Meh. 9% more for Netflix? GET THE PITCHFORKS!! If Chicago passes a law imposing tax on a type of business, the business must either obey that law, cease doing business in the city, or risk legal action. How complicated is that? Chicago has finally run out of other people's money.