About a year ago, I started to work on some code to include a “now playing” feature here. It would track music I was listening to in my media player (Winamp, at the time), and put the info in the sidebar of this site. I looked at various canned code solutions, but I usually like doing these things myself. But it wasn’t a high priority, so I just tinkered with it here and there, and never really finished it up.
Since then, I’ve changed jobs, moved into a new house, switched from Winamp to iTunes, and I generally have had less free time available. [...]
Software taxes
Most states charge sales tax for “products”, but not for “services”. So, if you go to the store and buy a can of beans, you are charged tax. If you hire a lawn service to cut your grass, you are not.
Due to the way that commercially sold computer software is typically licensed, most states didn’t charge sales tax on it. Until fairly recently, anyways. I vaguely remember grumbling about it about ten years ago when Alabama changed their tax codes to allow for sales tax on software. After all, according to the software publishers, you don’t “own” software, you only license the right to use it. [...]