local machine tax kills arcade in small town

By stavio

December 15, 2018

This story got frontpaged on December 17, 2018

The best, and only, arcade in my small home town was part of a great family drive in. The place winning little league teams went for ice cream cones, or 12 year old birthday parties went for pizza and slush puppies. I didn't have a bday party there but when I turned 12, I was finally allowed to ride my bike there unescorted. No longer did I have to rely on older family members to get me to pinball, video games, pool, fooseball, and the juke box playing "put another dime in the juke box baby" for an actual dime.

I was elated. I was in my change weilding glory for a grand total of a couple months... then the petitions showed up.

"Please read and sign to stop proposed boro tax" or something to that effect, the notice exclaimed.

But anyone that knows anything about small local government knows, if councelmans' kids are spending too many quarters and hanging out with derelict youth, the way to put a stop to it is to enact a tax on machines in excess of 2. Needless to say the place closed its doors shortly there after.

Now a bike bound tween has to ride several miles to get alomost the equivalent variety, the 2 vids at the laundry mat, the 1 vid 1 pin at the pizza shop, 2 vids at the grocery store, the 2 vids at the handy market. I guess it was good exercise but really missed the much shorter trip the the one place that had all that and great food.

RIP Hoffman's thanks for the memories!

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It's stuff like that that kills the joy of being a kid.

Your local tax dollars in action...

In the end the idiots lost revenue for the city and small business. Way to go morons.

How long has this local law been on the books? Since 1981?

My City charges $100 per machine every year. I have over 100 games so that is $10K a year just to start. I got around it by claiming they are not COIN OPERATED.
My machines are not coin operated they are set to FREE PLAY and I charge a single admisssion price to avoid the TAX!

Its crazy for a city to charge a tax on these machines, but you see what it gets them, more closed businesses

God dam shame. Pinballs are not gambling machines. Do they tax auto shops extra, offices extra, coffee shops extra, machine shops extra? Wtf!

Charging admission and setting the machines to free play seems to be the trend to follow these days.

If you can get museum status then there may also be a tax break.

Do kids even go to arcades and pump quarters into pinball machines anymore? Seems like they are mostly into Xbox now.

Taxation is theft!

Hoffman's was large part of my misspent youth too! I did not know that a proposed game tax did them in. I just assumed that they were ready to retire or the food business was not what it once was.

All coin ops. That's why the pizza shop got rid of jukebox to keep a pin and a vid, the laundry mat got rid of 1 vid to keep soda machine and 1 vid.

The pizza shop did have a great operator though. Always brought new games and the rotation was long enough to master each title but not tire of (with the exception being Indiana jones vid... I still have "SOON KALIMAL WILL RULE THE WORLD" stuck in my head)