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California Considering More Internet Taxes
dcg writes "San Francisco Chronicle is reporting on how web taxes could help the states, especially California, with its budget woes. One particularly disconcerting comment is from California's Controller Steve Westly. 'In addition to sales taxes, Westly said he is considering a tax on Internet access like those that appear on telephone bills. He also is looking at a tax on software downloads.' Would this affect only purchased software, or could sourceforge.net become a source of revenue for the state..."
They are simply closing a (well-known) loophole.
If you buy expensive software (i.e. chip-design tools at >$100k per user) and you take delivery via FTP instead of physical media (CD/tape), you do not owe sales tax. On a big purchase (multi-million $$) the 8% is a BIG deal. It happens a lot in the Valley.
I'm surprised that it took the bureaucrats in Sacramento this long to find a revenue "source" this big.
With all this taxing crap, I can't wait until the US realizes that they are shooting themselves in the foot!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
You do get taxes recursively. You pay income tax on your salary. Then when you buy something, there is a sales tax. Then the company which got your money pays taxes on it. Then they pay their employees and that gets taxes. And it repeats on an on.
There are literally hunderds of programs that they should cut but they don't. However being the typical politician Gray has decided to piss people off into allowing him to tax ANYONE and EVERYONE by raising the spectre of nuking those prized programs.
In other words, Gray is doing what he has always done. There are two kinds of government employees. Essential and non-essential.
That should be an indicator of who needs cut.
For comparison, a local county is 67 million in the hole. They refused to cut their arts budget of 6 million, now tell me, whats more important? Buying art from people who can't sell it otherwise, or paying teachers?
That is the biggest difference between libertarians and those other two. Governments currently spend money on stuff they have no business doing so. But they have the guns to back them up, the idiocy of the general public to hide behind, and many cohorts in the press and special interest groups to run cover for them.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.