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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?"
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.
Because it is easier than cutting spending.
No, they're not monitoring traffic. They're planning to tax lease payments (assuming you lease your network equipment) or depreciation costs (assuming you purchase it and deduct the depreciation costs from your taxes).
The reason that you don't understand it is because it's fucking insane. I'm all for taxing businesses, the wealthy, etc. for their fair share but this is ridiculous on so many levels.
If this tax is to be fair, then they have to tax any other business leases (e.g. equipment) and depreciation on any other business assets at the same rate (assuming this isn't already done, which I doubt). If they propose this "tax parity," the shit will hit the fan in FL and this tax will disappear.
What will probably happen however is that they'll put it up to a vote and a bunch of ancient Palm Beach County residents will fuck up the butterfly ballot and the tax will pass.
Now that I've said all of that, if the proceeds from this tax were used to set up low cost (~$20/mo or less) statewide broadband access (available to individuals and businesses), regardless of location then perhaps this would be a good thing. More thank likely though the money's just going to go to that other Bush's campaign war chest.
BFL
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
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.'"
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*
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?