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House Passes Internet Tax Ban
computerlady writes "InfoWorld reports that the House of Representatives today voted a permanent ban on 'levying taxes unique to the Internet.' The Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act would permanently prohibit taxing jurisdictions in the U.S. from levying such taxes as e-mail taxes, bandwidth taxes, or bit taxes. To become law, the bill would have to pass the U.S. Senate and be signed by President Bush. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved its version of the bill July 31, and its next stop is the full Senate."
"This bill would broaden access to the Internet, expand consumer choice, promote certainty and growth in the IT sector of our economy and encourage the deployment of broadband services at lower prices. " ... so how come a bill that ensures that the Internet will stay as untaxed as it already is (for Americans at least), manages to promote all those great changes huh?
:-D
Oh well, can't complain too much, at least it's positive news. I just though it made good spin!
A little planning goes a long way...
Of course, socialists and Bush-bashers are going to hate this on principal, but I think most of us can see the positive conotations such a law has.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I know that nobody likes taxes, but given that some taxes have to be collected, why a special ban on "internet taxes"? I pay special taxes when I take a flight, for instance, why does the airline industry have to suffer special taxes but the internet industry doesn't?
Now, something like a tax per email would of course just be dumb, but would a fixed household-based tax on broadband be dumb? Especially bearing in mind that the gov. needs to police the internet to a certain extent (to those that say they don't, get back to me when your Mom gets their banking details stolen or your friend gets defrauded by a mock ebay site).
As much as I'd hate to see internet tax, it might be a mechanism to fight SPAM. Introducing a tax of 1 penny for each e-mail sent would set the average user back about $1 - $5 a month.
SPAM houses would pay through the nose... I thin this would be a small investment for all of us to make junk mail less profitable.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Come on man! My buddy is an M.D. and do you realize how much he pays for malpractice insurance?? States without malpracice caps are losing quality doctors fast as they flee to states where they can actually take home some of their pay after insurance.
Would putting a tax on internet transactions even be feasable? Granted, it would be relatively easy to track sales from huge companies like Amazon, but what about the individual selling stuff off of their own website eBay style? You would literally have to track down every single website that's selling something and make sure they're obeying the tax laws. Also, what about sites that are international? Would these laws be enforcable for us buying things from other countries or people in other countries buying things from us? The internet is a global entity, not just in the USA. I can see taxing e-mails, but I'm not sure how you would effectively tax online sales. Please feel free to explain to me how it could work, because I am interested.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
"What?! They voted against something I want? They're all a bunch of slaves to special interest groups!"
"What?! They voted for something I want? They're only doing it to get re-elected!"
It is about taxing per bit transfered over your network, whether connected to the Internet or not. It is about taxing each and every email you send out. It is NOT about sales tax.
Which makes it even more of a per state issue.
In either case it would be highly destructive to the Florida economy and any other state that persues such a course of action without getting the rest of the states to add the same exact tax across the board.
So it's now the responsibility of the federal governemtn to stop state governments from making bad decisions? Why do we bother with states at all if thet's the case?
Of course, socialists and Bush-bashers are going to hate this on principal, but I think most of us can see the positive conotations such a law has.
Sorry, but I am most certainly a Bush-basher, and I have been called a socialist before (I don't consider myself to be one, but I do share many of their ideals).
I have nothing against a law forcing consistancy in the application of taxation across diferent sales channels. In fact I think it is a great idea.
A real socialist should be against sales taxes all together anyway, they are inherantly regresive. Instead, things that can be taxed progressively (income, capital gains...) should be taxed at a higher rate, and get rid of these damn sales taxes.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
It's called the Universal Service Fee. All congress is saying is "heck with the Internet, we're going to tax EVERYTHING"
Since when is a tax "long overdue"??!? Isn't paying 1/2 - 1/3 of your salary enough? One of the reasons Internet sales have been so phenomenal is that there aren't the same burdens - financial (for consumers) and administrative (for businesses) that exist elsewhere.
Also, there has been a ban on interstate sales tax in many jurisdictions for many, many years. If you order something by mail from Oregon and you live in New Jersey, you don't pay sales tax. So what makes you think an Internet sales tax is justified? What about the New York vendors who have to compete with the Deleware vendors with the same product? The consumer is going to go to a place with a lower sales tax rate - they will avoid the ~8% premium they would have to pay buying from a New York vendor.
Incidentally, any place that still had a ban on interstate sales taxes would not be able to charge sales tax on Internet purchases, because it would violate the "unique" part of this bill. So they would only be able to collect on sales within their own state, which means that consumers will go out of state when possible to get their goods.
Still think an Internet sales tax is a good idea?
"Permanant" means nothing in this context. No government can bind its sucessors, especially with a law like this. The next time the Democrats get in, if they're looking for some extra revenue, it will be easy for them to just repeal this law and start charging Broadband Tax. Or even Bush himself, when it finally dawns on him just how much money he's losing.
It looks to me that this is just a little bit of staging for a future Federal tax on internet usage, perhaps interlocked with a Federal internet licensing/watchdog effort pushed through under the guise of "Homeland Security".
The rhetoric would go something like "...CyberSpace has become such an integral part of this nation's economy that it is the job of the Federal Government to protect it from terroristic disruption. In order to fund this hightened level of US Internet security, a Federal Tax will be leveyed against ..." This would also effectively allow the tax payer to pay for the high speed internet of not only the Federal government, but also State governments, who would of course be exempt from the Federal tax.
Of course maybe I'm just paranoid ... I sure hope so.
RFC2119
The American military has lots of excesses from the cold war. We have too large of a surface and submarine fleet. Without the former Soviet fleet, there is no need for our forces to be SO biased towards responding to a nuclear first strike (where first strike is designed to incapacitate our land-based missiles from responding), etc.
We should probably shift more of the money from excessive stealth fighters (there are no dogfights anymore, we just need a first wave to take out anti-aircraft response) towards more troops and better equipment for them.
However, if you are going to talk about the American military, it's our aircraft carriers that let us rule the world. That is how we can project power across the globe. It let's us send air power anywhere.
I look at things in Europe and the US the way children and adults see life. Children see the next purchase as a video game, and that their parents should pay for it. Adult understand that they need to work hard, earn a living, and pay for things like food and shelter.
You expect others to pay for your desires, we understand that we need to pay our own way.
You would think that 50 years of the US subsidizing Europes existance, plus the thousand year head start on civilization would put your standard of living tremendously beyond our own. However, the opposite is the case. Somehow the side affect of expecting others to pay for your lifestyle has resulting in productivity hits that are more significant than the savings from having us subsidize your defense.
Money has to be made, by producing goods and services desired. Anything granted by the government is a hand-out from money taken at gun point from those that produce wealth. Money is an indicator of productivity, nothing more.
Alex
It's not a big deal that congress is attempting to pass this law. The federal government is never at a loss for new things to tax. internet specific taxation would generally not be welcomed publicly, and our economy could use an e-commerce related boost besides. all that aside . . . The idea of an email tax - i'm sorry, the idea may be intriguing? Question Mark? but it's completely worthless. trying to keep up with who sent an email and when over the ENTIRE INTERNET and then figure out their geographic location would require such massive resources that goverment officials would spend more money enforcing the tax than they would make from collecting it. The tax billing errors would be ridiculous. this is to say nothing of mass-mailing worms that hijack your email account, or spoofing. i pity the poor company whose hijacked Exchange server racks up a few hundred thousand dollars in worm-spawned mail activity. >. give the email tax a rest, mnk? not happening.
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
An interesting proposition, but much of the spam we recieved either originates or is relayed through routers in other nations, not respect US law. So who foots the bill for spam that comes from countries that lie outside US Jurisdiction?
What happens when spam kingpins in America outsource to people in other countries that do not respect US law to take the blame for spamming?