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..."

Comments

Looking the wrong direction

[jmuzic1]

Amazing how quickly they look to tax more instead of looking at their budget and ridding themselves of all the bloat of government.

Re:Looking the wrong direction

[rworne]

You can't just slap together a power plant in a few months.

California hadn't built any plants for years before the power crisis, possibly a decade or more. The main reasons are all the environmental studies, regulations, NIMBYism, and protestors.

Californians are just reaping the fruits of their political choices, plain and simple.

Bush and his gang might have left California in a lurch just for "payback". As a Republican living in California, I somehow find all of this less than amusing.

Re:Looking the wrong direction

[rworne]

California has a long approval process. If you know what that means, it means "environmental impact study" along with whatever permits are required.

It's been commonly said that no power plants were built in the 90s, and the environmentalist websites try to debunk that. After reading what they say, it turns out there were some plants built. All small, mostly non-utility plants.

In this article, near the bottom, it talks about environmental and (mostly) political opposition to natural gas burning power plants that are popular in California.

But we may be both right, here they talk about this:

What most likely stopped many power plants from actually being built is a powerful NIMBYism (not in my backyard) mentality in California that is in no way limited to "environmentalists." Almost no one -- neighborhoods, businesses, golf courses, hotels, etc. -- wants a power plant, a landfill, radio tower, etc. in their backyard. The environmental "extremists" that often oppose such projects no matter what, often team up with local citizens and businesses (i.e., non environmental extremists) to stop the project. However, many projects are stopped by NIMBYism alone (i.e., little or no environmental opposition was present). NIMBYism and Environmentalism are not the same entity, although NIMBYists often use environmental arguments and they
often enlist environmentalists and environmental groups for support. Ask yourself two simple questions: If someone proposed a new powerplant or new landfill near your neighborhood or business, would you try and fight it? Do you consider yourself a
liberal environmentalist?

welcome to Nevada

[technoCon]

how long would it take for every server with any kinda taxable activity to relocate to Nevada? or Vanatu? You can bet that after any government starts taxing something, it'll never be free again. The power to tax is the power to destroy. This is an opening move in the destruction of high tech in California.

My dad worried about out-sourcing union jobs to Mexico. I worry about out-sourcing programming jobs to India. What's to stop the out-sourcing of all the other high-paying professions to low-tax areas?

Re:Tax on Downloads

[ewhac]

"This software is licensed, not sold..."

A popular quote from most end-user license "agreements" (which are all unethical, anyway). Different tax rules apply for license transactions than sales transactions.

Schwab

Revenue booster?

[Sheetrock]

Like most people, I enjoy using the Internet on a daily basis but consider it a luxury I could live without. Taxing Internet access makes more sense than taxing phones or food or other staples of life because it is generally the well-off that can afford access to it.

Likewise, Internet sales taxes are desperately needed. Not only are the well-off more likely to purchase things online, but the fact that they can dodge sales tax by doing so while the poor must pay when they go to the local stores is nearly an insult: this is one of those 'rich getting richer' schemes that doesn't get much airplay, but it should.

I'll agree that it's been a pretty fun ride, but we've already discovered that the Internet isn't free. Now it's time for the tax collectors to catch up.

Will lose more business for California....

[jsimon12]

All this will do is accelerate the exodus of high tech firms from California. Many companies are already moving operations to cheaper states, Sun for example is moving a lot of its operations to Colorado. All this taxing is going to do is accelerate that process and leave California with a smaller tax base in the future. Few politicians seem to think more then 2 or 4 years down the road, basically what they need to do to get reelected.

Re:Enron et al.

[mako]

First let me say nice troll.

This is of course patently untrue. California is in this position due to mismanagement. Gray Davis is a moron. California wanted to purposefully make deregulation look like a failure so they passed laws doomed to fail. Combined with the inability of utilities to build power plants due to the Green i.e. Communist (all environmentalists hate private property rights but this is another topic) policies in place.

So the people of California got a wonderful lesson in supply and demand. Unfortunately instead of learning their lesson they whine and cry like the children they are.

Patently false? Not quite.

[forii]

This is patently false.

Patently False?

Not

quite.

Sure, California's scheme for "deregulation" had some major flaws, but that doesn't excuse Enron, as well as other energy corporations from committing wire fraud, to the point of almost bankrupting the state.

You Need to Prove He Said This

[VividU]

How lame. An AC attributes a quote to the Governor of California overheard at a "private dinner" and it gets modded (+5). It's actually more revealing of the type of morons that frequent this great site than any thing the Gov. supposedly said.

Wait a minute!

[stinky wizzleteats]

States are having budget crises for the same reason we are - there's a RECESSION. I therefore don't subscribe to the idea that the people, suffering under the same fucking recession, should somehow be expected to foot the bill to maintain the pre-recession budget levels of state governments.

If tightening our belts is good enough for us, why is it not good enough for them?