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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?"
Maybe I have missed somthing but...
Why ?
This ranks right up there with Minnesota regulating VOIP like a normal telephone service.
Why the hell do law makers seem to think that every new technology needs to regulated to hell, or treated like some form of existing technology??? The internet LIVES the way it does today because it happened so damn fast than lawmakers couldn't keep up...
A substitue comm system? They must have needed a catch all to ensure they could screw every penny of tax of everything out there. Would this cover two tin cans with a string between them? I'd hate to see that go to court, I'm sure they'd rule it taxable.
I can understand the need for a 'tax' on very much public infrastructures like a massive telephone land line system or cable systems... but why would you need to tax someone extra for laying out 4 pair wire? Do in house telephone systems get covered? Do you have to have a certain type of equipment to 'qualify'?
There are some amazingly difficult terminology problems for them to define:
home be next?
Well lets see, I pay tax on my telephone bills, on my power bill, on my gas bill. I pay it on any wires I buy to install in my house and I pay tax on my house itself. What isn't taxed within my house?
0xfeedface
I've pretty much grown use to shite like this from our legislature. When they're not too busy cutting money from education or giving HMO's a get-out-of-lawsuit-free card, they occasionally manage to do something I find surprising and refreshing, but no less assinine.
I think this law is fine, but I say reverse it: instead of levying a tax on private companies for their LANs, how about they levy a tax on themselves for every piece of copper and fiber in the state, county, and city government networks. Then they should take that money and invest it in supporting the bits of Florida's economy that aren't tourism or hospitality, and see how that works out.
Fucktards.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
What constitutes a LAN that they are trying to tax? If I have a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone that communicates with my computer, is there a tax on that too? If they tax 802.11b/g, how about 2.4 GHz cordless phones operating on the same band? My computer gets its IP address via DHCP from my cable modem. Is this a local area network?
Furthermore, how would this work in practice? Would you have auditing commissions travelling from house to house inspecting crawlspaces for 3Com switches? Would you have to have a license to own networking equipment, like a TV license in the UK? What would the penalty be for operating a LAN without a license? They justify this as "taxing other forms of communication." Are they going to charge a 9% tax on children's walkie-talkies too? How about taxing the morons with their Nextel 2-way radios in a movie theater? Maybe that wouldn't be so terrible.
Unless the exact devices to be taxed are made insidiously clear, this could be a great way to ensure that arbitrary people are taxed on arbitrary things. Democrats especially.
You know, why doesn't government ever get labeled as "big" or "greedy" as profiteering corps do, when government is the BIGGEST corporation of them all, and the ONLY one (well, the RIAA is close now) that has the power to use guns to enforce it's will...
Everyone who has two PC's sharing internet from a router has a LAN and would be subject to tax.
Taxation that would be COMPLETELY unjustifiable. How can PRIVATE infrastructure that government has no role in creating or maintaining be justifiably taxed?! That I've ALREADY paid tax on, for the income that BOUGHT the equipment, and then on the router, NICs, switch and cabling when I purchased them?
If this flies, don't think that other tax-hungry states, like WV or KY (where I work and live) won't follow suit. At home here, I have a LAN infrastructure that rivals most small businesses... It seems unfair to tax me because of my expertise in creating it!
So, what will happen? Government revenue agents busting down doors looking for CAT 5 cable and 802.11 antennas?
But then, don't sucessful people have broadband and home LANs? Taxation is all about punishing (discouraging) success to feed failure, I guess.
Now the geeks have been targeted.
Corporatism != Free Market
Okay, look, duh. It's an opportunity to make money. Why are you even asking this question? the only reason marijuana isn't legal today is that people make too much money on maintaining the status quo. This is the same thing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's hilarious. I can just imagine:
The Kelley Ethernet Blue Book will list my router and Cat5 cables as worth $20 used, down from $22 a year ago, and the government appraiser will come out to appraise my network worth every year, resulting in a tax to the tune of eighteen cents. Don't see that one happening.
(Of course, they could make it "just a tax for corporations". Oh, wait, that wouldn't be better for corporations than for individuals, so that change wouldn't fly....)
"Realy though, it sounds like a cash grab. Government sees money, so it always wants to get a slice of the pie. You will see this more and more in an effort to pay for the over-inflated security budgets of states due to terrorism."
And the overinflated "social" spending budget. That 40 years after it's inception leaves us with the same poverty rate we had when it started.
I'm all for taxation and government... To take the MINIMAL amount it needs to provide the MINIMUM amount of oversight needed to enforce laws and keep civil order.
It seems to me that taxes have ALREADY BEEN PAID on LAN equipment (income and sales). Why should stuff used on PRIVATE PROPERTY be taxed on use, when the government has no role or expense in it's creation or operation?
Corporatism != Free Market
Why? Because they can and it makes them feel important.
Don't mean to be redundant, but there's a very good (not good good, but "explains things" good) reason they do: they're paid to do so.
Minnesota imposed VoIP regulations to protect the incumbant carriers. ILECs are aggressive at lobbying and throw a lot of money around during election time. (After all, they've got to spend some of that money the fleeced you on your business line somewhere).
Florida's proposal is bizarre. Granted, the ILEC tax model is old, though they're still finding creative ways to pump back money to the old boy network like re-inventing the rural telephone fund to tax broadband service and give the money back to ILECs in exchange for their promise to think about rural customers occasionally. (In an odd twist, our company which provides service to half a state in fly-over-country, would be taxed in order to give the money to ILECs who don't offer broadband! Go figure...). But this Florida one even has me puzzled. It's as loopy as use tax (sales tax for sales that a state does not have legal jurisdiction for, and then creates a tax on using products, but exempts you if you paid in-state sales tax, meaning the only people that pay use tax are interstate purchases which didn't pay sales tax. How's that for simple?)
Since nobody wants to cut budgets in state gubmints, it makes you wonder what's next. Don't be surprised if we see:
- a simple "per-foot" tax on cable. We'll have to have 14-page exemption forms for farmers who have long rural distances to run between the barn and the house, of course.
- a MIPS tax, socking it to the rich suckers who can afford that top-of-the-line processor (sort of a PC SUV tax)
- CPU cycle credits: download and run GUBMINT.EXE in the background, allowing the state's tax computers to load share when your PC is idle, and get a $25 annual rebate on your LAN tax. (Of courses, the state will hire consultants from Intuit to write spyware that measures your LAN length and other taxable details and reports back thru the exe program).
Come on, public servants. Certainly you can find more creative ways to part us from our hard-earned money while you play solitare all day at the DMV!
*scoove*
Has anyone thought about how much this will cost Disney? They _may_ have the largest network in Florida. They also bring in quite a bit of money in to the state (tourist trap). Given the fact that Disney generally grabs every penny it can, I am thinking they will use the fact that Disney world is the biggest money maker for the state and say to the government, "No."
Never thought I would be rooting for Disney, but in this case I am. I would say there is nothing to fear. But that is just my view, which I am told is usually out of sync with the real world.
I'm going to use WLAN from now on... reduce the amount of cabling required and the tax.
This is why I'm against sales taxes, because you end up being taxed for earning the money AND spending it. In fact, if I were in charge I would consolodate all taxes into the income / payroll tax (in a progressive way, of course)
...too many tech. companies in Florida, so many that they want to prevent new companies to bring their business to the state.
Great idea.
Here's the taxes for my current cell phone bill:
TAXES, SURCHARGES AND REGULATORY FEES
-----------------
Description Amount
FEDERAL TAX = $2.13
STATE TAX = $6.22
CITY TAX = $3.75
911 SURCHARGE = $0.50
STATE ENHANCED 911 = $0.20
UNIVERSAL CONNECTIVITY CHARGE = $1.37
TOTAL TAXES, SURCHARGES & REGULATORY FEES = $14.17
I can understand the 911 charges and they seem reasonable but it seems that everyone wants their cut. The city, state, and the feds want to take me to the bank.
My cable bill shouldn't look like this.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
If I lived in Florida, not only would I stop buying my network hardware locally, I'd stop buying a lot of other computer-related stuff locally too. After all, if I'm already driving to Georgia for a NIC, why not buy the motherboard and all other bits & pieces that make up a PC while I'm there?
Chip H.
For those that don't read the article:
"Computer networks would be taxed at that percent on either annual lease payments or depreciation."
How to get around the law if it is lease based: Run a second company that provides computers to the main company at a lease of 1 cent a month/computer. The second company will run at a loss, but will save the massive taxes.
It's really three taxes - federal income tax, state income tax, state sales tax, which is the only reason why it works at all. The feds get all their budget from income tax, and the states get it from both sides of local commerce.
So why is it fair for states to still doubletax? It's because they have no power to tax commerce outside their jurisdiction. So they tax ANY income earned in their jurisdiction (including that of "people who live in another state but work here") and ANY sales in their jurisdiction (including "people who live elsewhere but went shopping here"). Income/sales tax rates self-balance and you can't avoid paying state taxes by being clever and living (and shopping) in a no-sales-tax state and working in the neighboring no-income-tax state, which if done en-masse would cripple the budgets of both states. In theory the sum of the two taxes equals a fair amount, no matter what state you work in and what state you shop in.
Consolidating ALL taxes won't work. You'd have to basically eliminate the states entirely by passing an amendment to the constitution stripping the states of the right to collect taxes. Only reps/senators from the top 10 most populous states would support that - hence it is impossible for that amendment to pass in Congress (2/3 vote) or state convention (3/4 vote). Even if it did pass, would YOU trust the feds to collect the taxes fairly and then fairly distribute some of the haul back to the states?
It's an opportunity to make money.
An opportunity to make money arrised when you provide something of value in exchange for monetary remuneration. Government isn't about making money...it's about taking money. I make it, they take it. Simple.
So, what do I get in return that's of any value? Quite simply, one could argue that the streets, police, schools, national defense (minus Ashcroft, Poindexter & Co.) etc. comprise value that I receive for my tax money. But the natural tendency is to take more and more without providing an equivalent return in value, and that's exactly what's happening here. If the citizens in Florida are smart, they'll put an end to this faster than a politician can say "Cat 5", much less figure out what it means.
This is a tax on the depriceated value of the network. If you are not a buisness no tax because you can't clame deprieciated losses. This is to fix a company that writes off $1,000,000 in network equitment depriciation every year and therefore doesn't pay taxes.
This BTW is the is one of the reasons M$ didn't pay ANY fedral taxes last year
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Not really. It's more the alcoholic beverages industry as well as pharma and medical that want marijuana outlawed because it could potentially really cut into their profits. I myself have no desire to drink when I've smoked pot. In addition to that long time consumption of pot does not have by a long shot the same kind of serious health risks that alcohol consumption has. And what's even better... smoking pot gives me ideas... something the government and the moralists absolutely hate. The only thing I can think of in reply to your post is maybe they don't want healthy blacks with fresh new ideas.