Taxing political speech

I was interested to hear at our local cracker-barrel session with local legislators today that there is a proposal in the South Dakota legislature to tax political advertising. Interested parties may read the bill here. 

This bill strikes me as ill conceived. Professor Lauck might be able to speak to this, but there are certainly First Amendment issues raised by this proposal. It has often been said that the power to tax is the power to destroy, which is one reason why we exempt religious institutions from most taxation. The idea that one would have to pay the government to engage in political speech strikes me as odd, to say the least. This will also have the unintended (I assume) consequence of driving up the cost of campaigns. It is expensive enough to run a campaign, and political candidates spend enough time raising funds, I don't think we need any extra burden.

I suspect this bill is motivated by the constant barrage of advertisement we get here in South Dakota when there is a high profile race, as in our last two Senatorial races. Yes, it becomes annoying to see these ads over and over again. Isn't democracy a pain in the rear end? If only we were like Cuba or North Korea, then we wouldn't have to see political ads at election time.