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Florida Proposes Taxing Local LANs
Vellmont writes "From the state that brought you the 2000 presidential election debacle, now comes the proposal to tax your LAN. The Orlando Business Journal is reporting that the the state of Florida is thinking about putting a 9% tax on LANs within the state. Exactly what they will be taxing isn't clear, since the tax amounts to 9% of... something. Will taxing the electrical wires within your home be next?"
That's why the DMCA, TCPA, copyright/trademark law, wiretap laws, etc. work perfectly. At least in this case, there is no chance at all that this proposed tax will actually happen. Next they will try to tax people who _think_ about buying something on the net, or ponder putting gas in their cars. Frigging idiots.
(Idiotic laws/implementation is part of why SCO is trying to pull off crazy moves)
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I hear there are two types of people in Florida... Really really old people, and their parents.
+1 for good karma, love for the DMCA, SCO, and low user id.
The original intent of most communications taxes was to subsidize the government's cost for the publically provided communications infrastructure... if the gov't is going to be supplying me with a free GigaBit ethernet LAN, then sure, they can tax it's use.
Get with the program people... sounds as wacky as Seattle's proposed tax on espresso!
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Well, if the RIAA can discover "virtual" CD burners in raids, maybe they'll tax "virtual ISPs", or "server potential" which would be the result of some weird formula involving CPU types and speeds, RAM complements, etc...
I can see the headlines now. "Joseph McMurphy has been artrested in Altamonte Springs, Florida, for allegedly possessing the equivalent of 6 Internet servers without paying network wiring taxes. This amount, roughly equivalent to 60 small Web sites or 600 personal sites......."
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
What a great way to encourage businesses to setup shop in your state! I'm sure companies will flock to Florida now.
Well, if it's nine percent of my incoming spam that they want... the state can have it.
It would be so nice if people would read the actual article. (Yes, I realize the above was a joke.) Here's the vital line:
Computer networks would be taxed at that percent on either annual lease payments or depreciation.
What they're talking about, in nine cases out of ten, would be taxing equipment depreciation. (I assume that they're referring to dedicated WAN lines when they talk about annual lease payments, since I don't know anyone who leases LANs.)
What's really boneheaded about this is that LANs are so cheap, even for relatively large LANs, that equipment expenses are more likely to be written off as capital expense rather than being depreciated over time. Even then -- since annual depreciation is usually defined by tax codes -- most LANs would last well beyond their depreciation period, resulting in an exemption from further taxation.
What'll be interesting to see is how they define what a LAN actually is. Hubs, routers, switches, and spools of CAT-5 or coax, sure, but will they be including NICs -- which are arguably part of the PC rather than the network proper -- or network operating systems?
The worst part is that this won't be a good source of revenue, but will impose considerable expense on businesses to comply with the reporting requirements.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Here's why you'll start seeing more crazy-sounding initiatives like this "lan tax":
1. Outsourcing jobs overseas = massive amounts of lost taxes for USA. Since IT jobs were hit the hardest and California was the hottest IT area, it doesn't take a genius to figure out one substantial reason why they're in a budget crisis (which is a taste of things to come for our federal budget).
2. Huge tax cuts without requirements on how it should be spent = lost tax revenues that might not be spent at all or spent in ways that improve the economy. This is kinda like giving a total stranger $100K and expecting him to spend it in ways that help you while not giving him any expectations on how to spend it (i.e. he can spend it all on building offshore infrastructure to move even more US jobs overseas!).
3. Our president's failure to build consensus in the UN to attack Iraq and then being exposed for making false justification statements means that other countries are less willing to send their young soldiers to die in Iraq. This means more of OUR taxes going to pay for this ongoing fiasco which will likely INCREASE the odds of future terrorist attacks & boycotts against US-made products.
4. and so on including our mounting budget deficit which is like running up a huge credit card bill with mounting interest that YOU and I must pay later with...you guessed it--more freaking taxes than EVER given the aging demographics of babyboomers and their impact on social security, medicare and reduced collection of income taxes from them as they retire.
NOTE: $100K is roughly how much VP. Cheney will save in taxes in one year due to the Bush tax cuts. Since that money has to come from somewhere, many of our brave soldiers sacrificing their lives in Iraq will receive PAY CUTS of around $200/month.
Don't be surprised if you find important services like public schools and homeland security facing massive budget cuts in the future--it doesn't HAVE to happen but I don't see a way out if we continue managing our government in the most idiotic way I've seen in decades.
I feel sorry for the poor soul who'll get elected as our president next because he's gonna have an almost impossible task on his hands (he'll need to take massive and very unpopular action to fix this mess being created by the current politicians).
Because it wasn't taxed yet
Where do you live?
Around here, when we were first permitted to get to the Internet via a phone line, there was already a tax on every phone bill. Then the cable folks supplied Internet service, and part of every cable bill is a tax. I've bought a few wires (thin ethernet first, then the hub that the vendors have forced on us for the last few years, all to connect a few home computers, and part of every purchase is a tax.
We need electricity to run our computers, and part of every electric bill is - you guessed it - a tax.
So what they're talking about is a special, higher tax for those of us on the Net. Every little bit of the net has been taxed right from the start; they just want networks taxed even higher than any other sort of comm or power equipment.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This reminds me of the bizarre logic that was used by advocates of the 'Intangibles' tax we collect here in KS. They said that if you invested your money in farm land
you'd pay property taxes on it, but if you just put it in the bank and 'clipped coupons' you don't pay them, so it's only fair to tax intangibles too.This reasoning completely ignores the fact that the capital that your investment goes to is already subject to property tax, and taxing intanbibles qua intangibles is double taxation, just as taxing computer networks is as well.
Before anyone clicks on the Reply to This link to pipe up that it's double taxation on the telcos too... yes, it is. It's an extra tax they pay in exchange for having a government-mandated monopoly. They pass that tax along to their captive customer base, which is oblivious to the fact that businesses don't pay taxes, they collect them.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Huge tax cuts without requirements on how it should be spent = lost tax revenues that might not be spent at all or spent in ways that improve the economy. This is kinda like giving a total stranger $100K and expecting him to spend it in ways that help you while not giving him any expectations on how to spend it
Good point. The only solution is a 100 per cent flat tax rate. Clearly, the only organization that can spend money wisely is the government.
While we're at it, if we can't trust the people to spend money wisely, why can we trust them to pick the government? We should also close the "voting loophole".
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Communications has traditionally been (in the US and elsewhere) quite regulated. The reasons are logical in general, he who has the wires, holds a monopoly. People who have monopolies are dangerous to consumers. I agree with that, in fact I think all monopolies are dangerous and inherently bad for a country and the gov't should sponsor competitors to monopolies wherever possible. But I digress.
There is a common misconception that ALL communications is thus monopoly like, and subject to regulation. They try to do this with VOIP, internet traffic etc. They have lost site of the INTENTION of regulation, which is to protect consumers against dangerous monopolies. This is exagerrated by regulated monopolies (telco's, cable co's etc) which would be forced to compete with cheaper alternatives. They fuel the fire and confuse the issues. VoIP for example is a major annoyance to telco's at the moment, as it might allow cable companies (for example) to deliver voice service without the normal federal regulation. This is ridiculous of course, and spoken by people who know better and wish to hide the fact that almost EVERY wired network connection in the world is regulated by at least one gov't agency, and the cost of regulation is passed on to the buyer. The internet (not that I'd necessary use this for business class VOIP mind you) is just as much subject to regulation as anything else. The issue here is that you're not paying $24/month on phone service in addition to your data. So these groups are constantly lobbying any politician who will listen about how unfair things are. A politicians education on many issues may consist ONLY of parties interested in changing something, and regrettebly money plays a lot into who he listens to most.
Politicians on the other hand are given the unenviable job of solving various government crises with the tools at their disposal. They can solve financial problems by cutting or taxing. If they choose to cut, they must select something to cut, and face public wrath. If they choose to tax they must face the wrath only of the public affected. So this relatively creative guy (ignorant perhaps) decided he's going to tax "LANs". How many people have LANs? Few individuals. Those individuals use them at work probably, but hey, that's someone elses pocket. So now he fixes a financial snafu AND pleases a local telco. The public won't argue, he probably gets some in pocket, this is a winner, right?
I love how impassioned politicians get during their campaigns about ideals and visions. Democrats and Republicans argue about the most inane things and come off sounding as if they are opposite poles of the universe. Whoever gets elected usually pulls one or two publicity stunts to show the world how he follows his ideal and spends most of his time with it. Simultaneously the ideal falls by the wayside on every other issue in the interests of time, image and greed. I'm not saying I believe they're all evil like satan, but most of their actions can be understood.
Somehow it's up to us to fix this, but how....
Don't be so quick to dismiss all regulations as unnecessary interference. Some are nothing but lobbyists freezing out the competition, but others addressed real problems.
The bottom line is if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and is being baked with an orange glaze and served to hungry diners, it's a duck. Paypal is a bank and the sooner it is treated as one the better off everyone will be -- too many people have been burned by arbitrary and opaque dispute resolution policies. VoIP that replaces conventional phone service *is* phone service and the users need to have the same protections (e.g., against unauthorized wiretaps, arbitrary charge dispute resolutions, etc.) as regular phone service users, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
'Oh, so they have the internet on computers now do they?'
I think that quote about sums up this plan.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Personally, I think taxation should be directly related to the public cost for the item or activity. For instance, having a home means that you make police, fire, schools, prisons, water service, etc. necessary. So tax a home based upon the costs incurred to support these things. Tax a vehicle based on the costs needed to maintain the roads -- i.e., wear and tear on the roads. Tax pollution and garbage.
The things that seem the most unjust are the taxes which are completely disconnected from the use of the tax money. A tax on LANs is ridiculous because there is no reason to think that it costs the state any money for you to have one -- the public incurs no costs to support your LAN. In addition, LANs are things that are needed by people and businesses. So, like windows and hearths, it seems even worse that the state is collecting taxes on them because they know people cannot live without them. It makes you feel very powerless at the hands of the state.