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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..."
Amazing how quickly they look to tax more instead of looking at their budget and ridding themselves of all the bloat of government.
Why don't they just tax the tax revenue? There'd be a recursive loop and money FOREVER!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
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.
"I know as well as anyone how much we owe the tech industry, but what are the geeks going to do if we piss them off with Internet taxes? Leave?"
-- California governor Gray Davis at a private dinner
I can imagine my statement:
You have downloaded: SupAR WArEZ!!! $0.50c
You have downloaded warez, and and broken copyright laws: $5000
Also, doesn't it defy the entire point of the internet? (apart from nuclear safty) a free database of information for the education of the people?
Why doesn't the federal government help CA out, we 'were' a major source of taxes, all we need is a break. Sigh...
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?
I still see the Internet retail stores as a flawed design. Yes, buyers should be paying taxes based on where the product ends up, like any other company that ships products. Though, even without taxes, why would a consumer pay $10 shipping for something he can get a 10-mile drive away? I fail to see how Internet retail really makes it, except in a few rare cases where products are rare.
This could be very unfair, how that be controlled? By monitoring access to software vendor's ftp servers? sourceforge? This will mean once and for all the rise of p2p protocols, for a good reason now.
Or counting bandwidth used? This will cause problem with any piece of software that check for updates (antivirus, "smart" operating systems, advertising software/spyware, etc).
At least if they return taxes on received spam some people will not be so angry, in fact, could mean finally that "get rich fast" schemes work at last.
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.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I have a better idea for getting California out of its budget problems. Shake Gray Davis upside-down until his campaign donations fall out.
I would like to know what exactly he considers an internet download. Because technically, almost everything that flows through the Rx pair on your NIC is a download. So, taxing slashdot index.pl for every view? Or maybe only 'programs', but then are java applets and client side web code considered programs? Or how about online games, would those be taxed per connection, per hour?
I can only see that part failing miserably, or if it doesn't, that man is going to lose his office quickly.
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.
Dear sirs,
I know you are looking for an alternative source of revenue for the state. However I feel that an internet tax will only stifle a already hurt sector of the economy.
Driving up the 101 by where I live, I see thousands, if not millions of square feet of office space empty. If you had not worked here during the boom you would not know that at one time these offices were filled with people paying income tax to the state.
Which brings to mind a question for me, what happened to the 100k in taxes you took from me over a 3 year period between 1997-2000? I know I was not the only person who contributed that much in taxes, yet I only got 6 months unemployment and still can't find a job in IT. Why should I try and go into another career? I'm 30 years old, this is what I trained for, and right now my skills are being severly underused.
So again, please don't add more gas to this fire by taxing an already hurting economic sector. We're suffering out here in Silicon valley living month to month on the small consulting jobs which are nothing more than a handout compared to a real paycheck.
And yes John Katz, i'm still eating ramen.
Instead of scaling back its operations and looking for useless projects that could be eliminated to fund core services, the state blithely adds new taxes. Why not just do something really progressive like *gasp* privatize the public healthcare and housing services. Let poor citizens in good standing keep their houses, apartments, etc that they get from public housing. You want to give them a sense of pride? Do that or give them a really really small 0% interest mortage on it to the tune of say.... $50-$100 a month. That way they're paying their way like everyone else and surprise, surprise the rest of California isn't paying for them anymore, and is now getting money back!
California is what Socialism on a greater scale in the US would be like. Non-essential public services such as free healthcare for the indigent, public housing and welfare services aren't here to actually fix a problem, they're here to punish the middle and upper classes. Don't give me that bullshit about "that's not really Socialism." No shit sherlock, Socialism exists only on paper and in the head of utopian hippies who are pathologically incapable of dealing with reality. The reality is that big government destroys civil rights and encourages violence. You want to make a difference? Vote for a Libertarian and take that percentage of your income that would have gone to welfare and give it to a homeless shelter or a free medical clinic. Those people genuinely care. The money won't get lost in a bureacracy and will actually help the poor.
I live in Virginia so I can only watch CA's problems from afar. CA's problems are of their own making. The people of california deserve this problem. I have no respect for a group of people that have police departments as institutionally corrupt as the LAPD yet have enough faith in the government that they think gun control will protect them. You can't trust your own fucking cops and yet you give up more rights to big brother. What will it take Californians? Bin Laden getting ahold of a stolen nuclear weaponing and vaporizing LA for the majority of you to realize the government can't provide for and can rarely pre-emptively protect you?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
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.
Heh, software downloads would undoubtedly apply to JavaScript, since JavaScript is software. I can see it now, Granny blunders into a porno site and after experiencing a JavaScript blitzkrieg winds up owing the state of California $47.86.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
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.
Well, they have to get the money to pay for all those Oracle licenses somewhere...
"I know as well as anyone how much we owe the tech industry, but what are the geeks going to do if we piss them off with Internet taxes? Leave?"
-- California governor Gray Davis at a private dinner
"Why does my homepage say '3y3 0wnZ0rr j00 gr3y d@v1Z!'? What does that mean, exactly?"
-- California governor Gray Davis, looking at his computer in three months.
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.