It’s outrageous. People in Philadelphia are being told to pay $300 to the city if they have a blog – even if it’s a hobby and they make no money from it.

According to the Philly NBC affiliate’s website, not only do bloggers have to pay $300 to get a license to blog, they must also “pay city wage taxes, business privilege taxes and taxes on any net profits — on top of state and federal taxes.”

I know the economy is rough, but this is an incredibly worrisome development. Blogs are the life’s blood of the internet – they are how many of us connect with friends, learn about social causes, find out about world and local events, promote our ideas, recipes and artwork.

A few people make lots of money on blogs, but the rest of us pay our domain registration and hosting charges without any hopes of reimbursement through ads or sales. In my case, I run two main blogs (this one, and my business blog at Getting Dirty Designs), as well as a couple silly ones that never took off, and some related to my day job. I can’t even imagine having to pay for the privilege – and frankly, the way money is these days, I wouldn’t be able to afford it.

This is wrong, and hopefully the voices of a few hundred thousand bloggers will help convince Philadelphia lawmakers that they’ve gone too far this time. If you have a blog, I encourage you to speak out about it.

You can read the story for yourself, as posted on a local NBC affiliate website.