Sex sells. Literally. While other businesses are folding, women trade power suits for lingerie because the brothels remain open. Business may not be what it once was, but Nevada's brothels are still a multi-million-dollar industry, oases of neon in the desert beyond the casinos.
But Nevada – the only state in which brothels are legal, licensed and regulated – is facing a budget shortfall. The incoming taxation chairman, Democratic state senator Bob Coffin, has proposed to fill the state's coffers by imposing a $5 tax on acts of prostitution in legal brothels. Despite support from the owners of the brothels, his plan has been rejected. Senator Coffin responded that "people weren't willing to get their hands dirty". But these communities already have "dirty hands": they benefit from the local taxes and fees paid by brothels and their workers.
Taxing sex work is not a problem. Sex workers pay taxes like everyone else. Tracy Quan, author of Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, and a member of Prostitutes of New York, said: "People outside the industry fantasise about prostitution, and their fantasy includes freedom from normal responsibilities. So one of the escapist myths is that sex workers don't have to pay taxes. Of course they have to, and if they do not, the penalties are considerable."
Lila, a sex worker, explained that the Mustang Ranch – the legal Nevada brothel where she works – gives all its workers 1099 forms as required by the IRS. The Nevada brothels pay high licensing fees to rural counties. In some counties, the licensed brothels actually form the main tax base. They are also some of the biggest employers in rural Nevada, employing not just sex workers, but also cooks, housekeepers, security personnel, cashiers, managers, bartenders and drivers. The sex workers live on the premises, rather like a nice hotel.
People in the illegal sex industry also have to pay taxes. "Bree", an escort in Chicago, told me that she is scrupulous about paying her quarterly estimated taxes in advance each year so as not to attract unwelcome attention from the IRS.
The Nevada counties prefer not to acknowledge the contribution made by licensed prostitution to their bottom line. Some counties and towns impose some extraordinary restrictions on commercial sex workers. The net effect of these regulations is to separate sex workers from the local community. Some jurisdictions require brothel prostitutes to leave the county when they are not working, while others take the opposite tack, forbidding them to leave the brothel where they work. Some do not allow the children of the women who work in the brothels to live in the same area.
The city of Winnemucca requires brothel workers who have cars to register the vehicle with the local police, and workers are not permitted to leave the brothel after 5pm. In some places, registered sex workers are not allowed to have cars at all, so that they must pay someone else to buy necessities like shampoo and soap. These unique regulations treat brothels and the women who work there as if they are not a part of the local community – despite the contributions they make to the state and the community in the form of taxes, fees and jobs.
Some of the revenue from the proposed tax would have funded new services for prostitutes, including a counselling service. If I were so isolated within the community in which I lived and worked, I just might need that counselling service. The problem is the fact that sex workers are treated as separate and unequal members of their communities. If the tax changed this, it would be cheap at the price.
