Other Impractical Aspects

There are several other impractical aspects to the Home Occupation Ordinance, as currently written.

For example, the law states that a writer needs a separate license for each business he or she is in--with a maximum of two business licenses permitted. That wouldn't be so bad, except that the law also states that selling a written manuscript to a company puts you in the same business as that company.

Think for a minute about the unfairness of this approach. If a hardware store sells materials to a contractor building a house, and also to a plumber repairing existing installations, no one thinks the store is in two different businesses. It's clearly in the one and only business of selling hardware. But if you're a writer selling articles to magazines, books to publishers, and scripts to TV or the movies, the Los Angeles Home Occupation Ordinance says you're in three different businesses, and since you can only be licensed for two, you must give up one of your occupations.

Since most people trying to make a living at home as a wordsmith tend to write for many different clients, often providing written materials for several different "businesses," the new ordinance effectively limits a Los Angeles-based writer's ability to survive. It's like telling Picasso he could paint, or draw, or sculpt, or make pottery, but not all four--at least not in Los Angeles.

What's more, IWOSC's Wolf points out, the city's assertion of the right to issue a license automatically gives it the right to send an inspector to a writer's home. The inspector is technically empowered to come in and check not only that you're complying with the Home Occupation Ordinance, but with all other applicable laws, city building codes, and so forth. City officials have denied any interest in sending inspectors out to home-based businesses, but this is cold comfort to most writers, who enthusiastically invoke the specter of Big Brother whenever the subject of licensing writers comes up.

As a practical matter, Wolf asserts, a writer who irritates a big-wig down at City Hall runs the risk under the new law of suffering serious harassment in his or her own home, and may even be put out of business as a writer.

Finally, many writers believe that their individual creativity and expertise form the real foundation on which the highly successful movie and television industries rely, and on which the Southern California economy thrives. So they resent being asked to pay new taxes on gross income while DreamWorks and the other megabucks studios receive millions in tax deductions, tax holidays, and other forms of tax relief.

--Robert Moskowitz