Dutch Prostitutes' New Caller: The Taxman

The working girls of Amsterdam’s red light district are about to get a really unwelcome gentleman caller: the taxman. Prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands for a decade, but authorities are just now getting around to taxing it, as part of the austerity push sweeping across Europe, the AP reports.

“We began at the larger places, the brothels,” says a spokesman for the country’s Tax Service, but now they’re moving to the “window landlords and the ladies” who line the district. Few are protesting the move, not even the prostitutes themselves. “It’s a good thing,” said one in a white leather dress. “It’s a job like any other, and we should pay taxes.” (More red-light district stories.)