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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?"
[FLORIDA]. What more can you say about a state that can't even figure out voting?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Maybe I have missed somthing but...
Why ?
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)
--
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.
From the state that brought you the 2000 presidential election debacle
Would that be Texas?
Are they going to audit anyone with a computer and an email address?
8==8 Bones 8==8
What else can you expect from the state that elected a guy named "Jeb".
If you dont pay the taxes, then you will be violating the DMCA. It's really that simple I would think.
Life is not for the lazy.
Heck, take 100 percent. Anything I can do to help.
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
> Exactly what they will be taxing isn't clear, since the tax amounts to 9% of... something.
Clearly, they'll charge you 94,371.84 bytes per megabyte.
Presumably you can pay by simply sending them a big e-message.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
9% of what? Two computers in an office times 9% doesn't make any sense. Typical legislators - educated way beyond their intelligence.
It sounds like a crappy idea any way you slice it, but from reading the article it looks like they are talking about taxing the purchase of the LAN equipment, rather than taxing/metering of usage itself.
What I don't understand is why this would be treated differently than buying desktop organizers or office chairs.
Morons.
How can they legally tax something that's wholly owned and operated internally by an organization?
In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.
"We're hoping we get a lot of attention paid to this and understand what impact would it have," he says.
I am thinking that they will have trouble finding any positive responses.
according to this article: "Computer networks would be taxed at that percent on either annual lease payments or depreciation."
Why do I h8 apple?
The Lanquisition!
NOBODY expects the LANquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the IRS.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.
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.
How could they possibly tax a LAN? First of all a LAN isn't connected to the internet by itself. Second, firewalls protect the visibility of the LAN. Third, where is the profit. Technically a LAN could be a $2 cross over cable. I have to think maybe someone non-technical came up with this. Perhaps they meant taxing commerical networks or ISPs. But then again, Florida can't even count to ten. Must be in the genes.
This is all just an attempt to take back the coveted title of The Doofus State from California. We reacquired it thanks to our upcoming election. (If Schwarzenegger wins, it's Total Recall, I suppose.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Should 95% appear to small, be thankful I don't take it all, 'cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman.
If you drive your car, I'll tax the street, if you take a walk, I'll tax your feet, if you get too cold, I'll tax the heat, if you take the bus, I'll tax your seat, TAXMAN!!!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
If it's by the byte, for heavily black/jewish democratic networks 1MB= 1024kB. On republican networks 1MB will = 1000kB.
Oh...and will they count hanging patch cords? What about ones that are plugged in, but haven't fully clicked into the port, and fall out during counting?
God help Florida users if the government learns of half versus full duplex...
Please help metamoderate.
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
There are some amazingly difficult terminology problems for them to define:
I'm impressed.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
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
What a great way to encourage businesses to setup shop in your state! I'm sure companies will flock to Florida now.
...right after I finish writing one for SCO.
Wha'?! It's what?
You know what?
Actually, as it turns out, because of some voting confusion, for every LAN installation, you'll be expected to pay approximately 9% of Pat Buchanan to the state of Florida. Pat Buchanan could not be reached for comment.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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.
Funny, I could swear it was businesses moving to other states...
AC comments get piped to
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).
The tax would be payable on the actual cost of operating and maintaining the system, which DOR defines as including the following:
. . .
Taxes, licensing, and franchising costs
It would in fact appear that at least part of this tax is derived from the amount you pay in taxes.
Of course I always thought it worked the other way around, with the goverment taxing you on a service based on how much it cost them to run it, but this way is so much more cost effective, with the government not actually having to provide a service before taking your money.
They meant to enact a new property tax, i.e., a tax on land, but somebody dropped the 'd'.
Of course, another sense of property taxation would be pretty hard on enterprise Java developers.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
you can pass the crack pipe back to SCO now.
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
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.
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 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).
Well, he could always try being honest, put Shrub in prison for treason and bill Asshat for all the money he spent covering up a statue since he has the maturity of a thirteen year old. That should help his popularity enormously.
Read the article. It says that the tax will apply to the lease payments (if the system is not owned) or the depreciation amount.
Download Linux ISOs in 5 minutes using LoRS Tools available at http://loci.cs.utk.edu
I'm going to use WLAN from now on... reduce the amount of cabling required and the tax.
...too many tech. companies in Florida, so many that they want to prevent new companies to bring their business to the state.
Great idea.
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
1. This has been happening for YEARS in every other segment of the economy? Why should IT jobs be the one to not go next? Once saw a sign at a buffet 'do not let your eyes be bigger than your stomach' California did JUST that.
2. Thank you for saying the goverment can spend *MY* money better than me. Its *MY* money that goes for those taxes. It never was the goverments in the first place. *I* am the one that earned it NOT them. I know dozens of people that used that money for exactly what it was put forth for, their children. They bought them new computers, cloths, and other things. All because they got 600 bucks they spent 1500 bucks. Oh yes that SLOWED the economy way down didnt it. Belive it or not the stock market is not the only indicator of what its like. 98-99 were a economic anomoly. The market is snapping back to where it should be. It is almost there if not already. Before the '.com bubble' unenployment was at 5-6%, and that was under your beloved clinton. He set in motion some of the largest company catastrophies EVER. By letting the SEC just ignor out and out fraud.
3. We set into motion that fiasco. We should end it. Show some responsiblity. All because we wanted some missle bases in Iran. When Iran went, Iraq helped us out. When we should have told them to get bent.
4. Do you know ANYTHING about economics? Did you know that money is actually keeping our economy afloat? Its called macro economics buddy. It helps smooth out the rough spots in the economy. When times are good we pay down. When times are bad we borrow money. If they had not borrowed that money what do you think this recession would have been really like? It would have been huge. There is only one way to get a balanced budget. That is to write your senator and tell him so. Everyone do it right now, it is a good thing to have.
Note: 500-1000 dollars for a 4 person family is HUGE. It means the dfference between buying new cloths or just using the wornout ones from last year.
Massive cuts are the ONLY way to balance the budget. The goverment grows at 4% instead of 8% and they call it a budget cut. That is double talk. Do not let them fool you into thinking they are the only ones that can help you. When was the last time you REALLY got help from the goverment? Those 'social' programs are a sham. They are so full of bored people that could care less, and full of such accounting fraud it would make enron look like econ 101. I see a VERY different goverment than you. They need less money. But he with the printers can make more...
See the real problem? You want to give them more money. If they do not get it they will make it up. They will do it the whole time saying its 'for the children'. Meanwhile they are PISSING money away.
He was born in New Haven, Connecticut.
I need to turn this into a bumpersticker.
Here's why you'll start seeing more crazy-sounding initiatives like this "lan tax":
Didn't Vice President Gore support a telecommunications tax? And didn't several states want to tax internet commerce during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s?
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
So taking less money from taxpayers is the same as giving it to strangers? Funny -- I thought paying taxes was more like giving money to strangers.
many of our brave soldiers sacrificing their lives in Iraq will receive PAY CUTS of around $200/month.
After the Wall Street Journal cited a story about the $200 pay cut, printed this clarification:
Many readers also pointed out that in addition to the $6,000 death benefit for families of servicemen killed in action, the Department of Veterans Affairs also offers low-cost Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance, which pays even if a soldier or veteran dies while not on duty.
Note the "tax free status," which is like giving money to a rich stranger.
Don't be surprised if you find import
Now it's IT Company story time! Everyone gather 'round! Ready? Once upon a time, a huge IT company by the name of IBM opened an office in Boca Raton, Florida. The ever-money hungry Floridian politicians, sensing a windfall, quickly went to work to enact legislation allowing the state of Florida to tax IBM's entire profits because they had a presense in Florida. IBM said "Screw you guys, we're going North!" The legislation was quickly dropped after that, but IBM held a grudge after that and eventually closed the IBM Boca plant (Which was by far the most beautiful one I've worked at to date) in the mid 90's, costing thousands of jobs in the Boca Raton area. The moral of this story is that you can try to fix something after you've broken it, but it probably won't do much good in the long run.
Oh yeah and a while back they also played the most self-rightious and annoying commercial about how if you went out of state and bought something, you owed Florida sales tax on it. So I'd like to send mad propz out to the penis of the country.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
When did they give HMO's a get-out-of-lawsuit free card? If you're referring to the most-recent legislation, that was about giving Florida doctors some relief (I should know, I am an ER doc in Florida). They actually capped my liability, which is a welcome relief... ER docs get sued often, and I can't remember the last time one of my colleagues or friends got involved in an ER case that had real merit. I'm sorry to say, but most malpractice lawsuits are for stuff that's clearly objectively reasonable care, which is probably why doctors prevail in almost 90% of those cases. Those numbers should tell you something...
HMOs, however, have had protection from lawsuits for years... it's a federal law called ERISA, and it prevents pension plans, etc from being emptied by lawsuits. Since Health Insurance is considered an employee benefit (like a pension), it creates a very effective shield against litigation.
Were you referring to some other legislation that I'm unaware of?
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Don't be surprised if we see:
- a MIPS tax, socking it to the rich suckers who can afford that top-of-the-line processor (sort of a PC SUV tax)
That would reinvent Bracket creep:
Remember that the progressive income tax was pushed through on the "soak the rich" principle.
At first there was a floor below which you didn't pay, so only the rich pay any income tax. Then brackets were invented, so only the rich would pay killer rates but the Fed would tax the middle class a little bit, too.
But then the government started running the printing presses to pay for its programs by inflating the currency. And gradually a dollar would buy progressively less. But there were progressively more of 'em circulating. So you got a "raise" that put you back where you were, with more dollars but about the same purchasing power.
Except it wasn't, really. Because the tax brackets were denominated in dollars, with no index to inflation. So middle income, and then lower income, and pretty soon just about any above-the-poverty-line income was pushed into those "soak the rich" tax brackets.
Oops!
Your (tongue-in-cheek) proposal would do the same, thanks to Moore's Law inflation of CPU speed. (Run the same apps on a newer machine and the processor just spins more in the idle loop - but you pay for that spin.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
what's the annual depreciation on two cans with a string tied between? Wouldn't we have a lot better laws if there was some "enforcibility" criteria they had to meet before they were passed?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Hey, maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem like a country concerned about abridging freedom of speech should be imposing taxes on communication mechanisms. I mean, if the government were providing a service for the tax like delivering a letter for postage or improving the state's public network infrastructure, then maybe I could see it. But, I find it unAmerican (in the old sense, not the new one) to force an individual to pay a fee to an essentially irrelevant (as in unrelated to the communication at hand) governing body in order to send a message. I mean it's called freedom of speech right?
So let's RTFA and see if we can figure this out, OK?
:-)
"Most of Florida communications case law stems from the rotary dial era," saith the article. OK, so to my layman's brain, that sounds like "Our case law is old, so we need to do some crazy think to generate more court activity so we can update our case law." Kind of like "throw some shit at the wall and hope some sticks." Am I on the right track here?
"'The standard response is on the border between surprise and outrage,' says Arthur Simon, senior vice president of big-business lobby Associated Industries of Florida."
Aha, big business is against higher taxes. (Makes sense.) Finafuckingly, our Disney lobbyists will do something worthwhile by figting this. I'll bet the Mouse has a pretty big fscking LAN. Remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
"'What did surprise the business community was the extent and reach of the rule,' says the lobbyist."
In 2003, a LAN tax is akin to a breathing tax. Like they said in the article, "Practically any office with two computers will have a local area network."
Oh well. I'll have to see how this one goes. As long as we don't have to vote on it, I think we'll come through OK.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
To the extent that every single physical and energetic part of a network is taxed from the start, from the wire to the hubs and routers and even to the energy that powers it up and modulates across the wires and chips, you have to realize that what they are proposing now is a tax on the flow of information.
...damned firewall. What is wrong with this VPN? Tunnel interfaces are all screwed up. I'm too tired to figure this out. 14 fscking hours and no VPN and no time to think. I don't know what to do. Someone, tell me what to do.
What else are they talking about? Clearly they are not talking about taxing the flow of electric current, otherwise they would tax your extension cord by length for every year you have it hanging in the garage. But you take that same copper wire in a different form factor and with a certain number of twists per foot, those same electrons modulated in a particular way, and now you have something new you can tax. That is a very interesting transition.
There is a peculiar kind of mind at work here. It's almost exactly the same mind working in the shadowy deeps at SCO, and in Redmond, and in government agencies across the country. It is a business mind only superficially. More specifically, it is the mind bent on control.
I am not a revolutionary. I probably should be and when I was younger I might have been but these days I don't have time for it. But I can sense when someone is making a move on me and the things I hold to be important, and this is one of those times. The hair on the back of my neck starts to rise and I stop configuring the firewall and I sit back and I think.
We are in for a rough ride, I'm afraid. The authorities have arrived. Between the RIAA and the FBI and the bean counters and Microsoft it is getting uncomfortable to be where we are, doing what we are doing, in the way we are doing it and have done it for decades. We are not domesticated enough, not cowed. They cannot control this, any of it, and it worries them endlessly. There is no business model for cattle that won't stay in their pen. But there are plenty of professionals who can round up your cattle for you, for a fee. And then to the factory.
Do the cows in the feedlot know where they are headed? They have had an easy life, haven't they. Grown fat and complacent. Did the jump-over-the-fence thing once, got hit with a prod, gave it up after that. The grass wasn't really all that much better on the other side anyway. Do the cattle ever stop to wonder about that day? And about the fence? About why it was so important to stay behind the fence?
Here we are grazing the tall green grass, belly deep and well pleased, and the herders have noticed we're out. Feel the first shock of the prod...hear the order to move out...what are you going to do...
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
tax on "thingy":
... thingy.
Politician: Gentlemen, our MP saw the PM this AM and the PM wants more LSD from the PIB by tomorrow AM or PM at the latest. I told the PM's PPS that AM was NBG so tomorrow PM it is for the PM it is zero. Give us a fag or I'll go spare. Now- the fiscal deficit with regard to the monetary balance, the current financial year excluding invisible exports, but adjusted of course for seasonal variations and the incremental statistics of the fiscal and revenue arrangements for the forthcoming annual budgetary period terminating in April.
First Official: I think he's talking about taxation.
Politician: Bravo, Madge. Well done. Taxation is indeed the very hub of my gist. Gentlemen, we have to find something new to tax.
Second Official: I understood that.
Third Official: If I might put my head on the chopping block so you can kick it around a bit, sir...
Politician: Yes?
Third Official: Well most things we do for pleasure nowadays are taxed, except one.
Politician: What do you mean?
Third Official: Well, er, smoking's been taxed, drinking's been taxed but not
Politician: Good Lord, you're not suggesting we should tax... thingy?
First Official: Poo poo's?
Third Official: No.
First Official: Thank God for that. Excuse me for a moment. (leaves)
Third Official: No, no, no - thingy.
Second Official: Number ones?
Third Official: No, thingy.
Politician: Thingy!
Second Official: Ah, thingy. Well it'll certainly make chartered accountancy a much more interesting job.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
If you RTFA, the article states what they are taxing in exactly one sentence. On the second page of the article. Clear as mud eh?
They are taxing the lease cost or the depreciation that the company writes off.
There may be additional local taxes as well.
I was wondering what the hell I was going to be taxed on my home LAN if this got passed, and since I neither lease the equipment, nor write off depreciation, I wouldn't be paying the tax. Let me run it as a home office though, and I guess I don't get to depreciate my router and Ethernet cards if I want to without paying a tax.
Bryan
(apology in advance: sorry for sounding ranty)
If you actually read the article, it seems fairly clear this tax would be aimed at business LANs, not home LANs. The Orlando Business Journal's target audience is business people not nerds. In Florida, they have a "communications tax" on business communications. There's a "proposed rule [that] pushes the definition of communications systems to include local area networks, or LANs, as well as wide area networks, or WANs, which connect computers across distances." Now it doesn't seem so bizarre does it? Or at least--it seems only as bizarre as the "communications tax" does.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
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.
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.
I'm not constitutional scholar, but with my vast experience (5 minutes with Google's help) it looks like you just have to be 30 and have lived there for 5 years
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?