The D.C. Council on Thursday voted 11 to 2 to remove from the city’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget a proposed 3 percent sales tax on advertising that a coalition of community newspapers, including the Washington Blade and the D.C.
lesbian of color publication Tagg magazine, said would have a detrimental impact on their ability to survive during the current economic downturn.
The Council vote was a dramatic reversal of its approval of the advertising tax two weeks earlier in a preliminary vote after Council Chair Phil Mendelson introduced the tax as a means of generating a projected $18 million in needed revenue for the city.