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California Considering More Internet Taxes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the got-to-pay-off-the-thieving-energy-companies dept.

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..."

3 of 475 comments (clear)

  1. Looking the wrong direction by jmuzic1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  2. welcome to Nevada by technoCon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  3. Re:Tax on Downloads by ewhac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions