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."

Comments

How could they legally tax those products anyways?

[StormyWeather]

I don't see how the states could tax internet transactions anyways. Isn't that part of the fundamental way our government is set up, so that states cannot levy taxes upon cargo from other states? If they could states like Oklahoma could really rake it in for things going through their state from Texas to Kansas. Man I wish I hadn't slept through government class on that subject now.

Finally...

[Clinoti]

I will stop getting those stupid emails about the internet tax for emails, and bandwidth taxes, etc...Which is the good side.

BUT on the other side of the equation a part of me would not mind paying an internet tax on emails, if it would help in the battle against spam and junk mailings...although one may assume that the senders have deep pockets.

So in this end this really resolves nothing for me. Execept for a link I can point to when I get the next barage of "Internet Email Tax!!!" emails. :)

Short Sited decison?

[jez_f]

OK this may be a little controversial but I think that in the future a 'bandwidth tax' or some such thing may not be a bad idea. We supposedly moving into an age of the information economy. Some people through the Internet have more access to information than others, this information makes their life better. They can look for better jobs, be better informed on what is going on in the world and make more productive decisions accordingly. This situation will get worse as more and more services move exclusively online. The info poor will have fewer opportunities.

If you see tax as a way of re distributing wealth to help the less well off then you could conceivably charge a bandwidth tax and put the money into public net access. I know not everyone sees tax this way but it dosn't seem like that bad an idea to me
It could also be used to help fund Internet monitoring, which I know no one likes but the government is going to do it anyway so why shouldn't people who use more bandwidth pay a greater share of the cost?

Is VoIP Unique to the Internet?

[Mikkeles]

I wonder how this will affect Vonage 's fight with Minnesota over the proposal to tax VoIP?

Re:States Rights

[NickFitz]

Here in the European Union, it arrived as of July 1st 2003. Purchases made online within the EU are liable to VAT (Value Added Tax, the EU version of Sales Tax), even if the supplier of the goods is based and shipping from outside the EU.

Some details here.

Email Tax

[MacGod]

DISCLAIMER: I am not trying to be flamebait here, this is my honest opinion:

I'm torn about the idea of an email tax. While in general I don't like the idea too much, it does occur to me that this might be the only way of dramatically reducing spam.

Look at it this way: Even a wicked-busy web maven likely sends less than 1000 emails a day outside of their own company LAN (with a few exceptions I realise. Individuals likely send less than 100 per day in general.

So, say you put a tax, to be administered by your ISP on each email, of say 0.1 cents per email. Big Business guy gets charged $1/day, home user $0.10 per day. By no means big money. Johny McSuperSpammer, however, who sends out 10 million emails every day, gets a handly little bill for $1000. Kind of changes the economics of his penis enlarger ads.

Like I say, I'm not a huge fan of paying more, but it does seem like making emails cost per message sent might be the best/easiet/only way to dramatically reduce spam.

Furthermore (ideally), to make up for the cost, you ISP could take $5 per month off your bill, to make up for the extra you're spending to send email. They still make money, because of the tax, the financial hit for you is minimal, but the spammers get hosed.