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Something about Virginia lawmakers circling adult websites with a calculator in hand feels oddly familiar. Down in Richmond, the House of Delegates is weighing a bill that would slap a 10% tax on the gross receipts of adult websites doing business in the state—and you can almost hear the gears turning as it lands on the docket.
House member Eric Zehr’s HB 720 proposes a new 10% levy on the gross receipts of “any commercial entity operating an adult website for all sales, distributions, memberships, subscriptions, performances, and other content amounting to material harmful to minors that is produced, sold, filmed, generated, or otherwise based in the Commonwealth.” It’s the kind of language that sprawls across the page, dense and deliberate, like it wants to leave as little wiggle room as possible.
If that wording gives you déjà vu, you’re not imagining it. In what could be an early signal of a new “copycat” trend—eerily reminiscent of the wave of state age-verification bills that followed Louisiana’s 2022 AV law—the Virginia proposal mirrors language in a bill currently pending in Utah, which calls for a 7% tax on adult sites.
Virginia wouldn’t be breaking new ground here. Alabama imposed a similar 10% tax last year, and since then, state senators in Pennsylvania have openly kicked around the idea of doing the same, pointing to what they describe as “successful approaches in other jurisdictions.” That phrase has a way of traveling fast once it enters the legislative bloodstream.
The concept has even been turned up to eleven elsewhere. Most recently, a candidate seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Florida grabbed headlines by proposing a 50% “sin tax” on the earnings of OnlyFans models living in the Sunshine State—an eye-popping number that felt designed as much for attention as for policy debate.
In Virginia’s case, supporters say the money wouldn’t just disappear into the general fund. Revenue from the proposed tax would be directed to the state’s Behavioral Health and Developmental Services Trust Fund, which supports care and treatment for individuals receiving public mental health, developmental, and substance abuse services.
That earmark isn’t unique, either. It echoes a similar directive in the Utah bill, reinforcing the sense that these proposals aren’t just inspired by one another—they’re following a template, almost step for step, as if the next version is already being drafted somewhere just offstage.
