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States Fight Internet Tax Ban, Cite VoIP Concern
PetiePooo writes "From an article at PCWorld: The Multistate Tax Commission is fighting a bill which makes the moratorium on internet taxes permanent. Their complaint is that it could be interpreted to include VoIP telephony such as Packet8 and Vonage, and they would lose that lucrative tax base as people switch from incumbent providers. The House has already approved the bill. When will the politicians figure out that VoIP is a going to end up as a product, not a service? Voice will be just another form of data. Here's another related article."
Change the tax system.
Change it so that the companies providing the physical links are the ones that pay the tax.
This will solve all the issues with VOIP
When will the politicians figure out that VoIP is a going to end up as a product, not a service?
When will people in general figure out that data transfer is going to end up as a service, not a product?
Now then, bring on the bashing...
.: Max Romantschuk
...but so is a regular telephone line. sure, it's analog "data," as opposed to digital for VOIP. If we follow that argument, then we shouldn't have to pay for telephone usage, either.
So the only thing that sets them apart is being analog or digital? I think if it is used for communication, they are going to see it as a threat.
A blog like any other.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
VoIP is hardly the problem in this case - I think the main problem is that the states are so incredibly strapped for cash after Bush' gross mismanagement that they are basically are on the path to bankrupcy...
Hence, they would do anything for some extra cash, rather than realising that "yes, VoIP would be quite cool, and people should pay just as little tax on it as they do on the Internet itself"
The Mini Repository - more links
All of their life, Politicians spent time with a profession, most of them are old enough that their interests early on in life were something else but technology. It would seem like since it's their job to supposedly help out the people and businesses by passing fair laws, that they would have more intelligence on how technology works. In this case, all they see it as, is a revenue income for companies that may try to sell that service as a form of package, and will want to collect a bit more coin from it.
new technology developments allow getting for less something that people was forced to pay much more in the past.
What would happen (warning: tinfoil-hat example here) if somebody discovered a way to produce cheap energy or a way to transmit data at long distances without using radio waves?
Would the rulers push the use of these technologies by anyone, or rather immediately find a way to tax whatever material/media/principle thay're based on after being lobbied (bought) by the already estabilished industries?
Of course it has nothing to do with state legislatures and governors spending money like a drunken sailor in a whore house when tax receipts were temporarily boosted by a booming economy and soaring stock market. The jerks in my state spent every dime that came in to the state treasury, with no consideration for what was going to happen when the bubble burst. As far as they were concerned, it was "free money", and they wasted no time in thinking up new ways to spend it.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Not bilking your citizens of their money does not constitute a "cost" or "loss" on your part.
Utilities such as telephones are taxed by several levels of government, not just the states. The shift of the telephone service to a permanently untaxable form will have a corresponding multi-level effect. Here in Fairfax County, VA we really get soaked - 22% levied against local service - see Fairfax County Tax Rates for details.
Take the bigger picture. This matter is really one of revenue shaping. It takes so many dollars to run the governments (that we hope are acting for the common good). They can get tax revenue from many places. The government sets various tax levels on different goods and services, and by so doing decides which industries and activities it wishes to encourage by giving them a break. This principle is applied at all levels of government. Losing the telephone tax base is not the end of the world - governments will increase the revenue stream elsewhere. Income, personal property, and real estate are perennial favorites here in the US.
That said, Congress should think carefully before reducing the choices that subordinate government levels have.
English -- gotta love it! / The engineers refuse to refuse the rocket until the refuse is removed from the launch pad.
will they tax the online time or data that is transmitted. and will i get a refund for unwanted data (like spam) or what? and what if you get you data from another country? or another countryman gets data from you? how come that you should pay for something that is wanted by another guy in a country that doesn't tax data? do i also have to pay for the data sent by a malicious worm?
questions over question...
".Sig Stealer" was here
When was the last time you carried a box of VoIP out of a store or had it shipped by UPS... seems more like a service to me...
How many of your democrats thought you would be agreeing with a republican today?
Okay but it still means something to me, please wire transfer your worthless money to:
Bank of America
Account number: 3948928289901
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VoIP will be taxed when the telephone companies figure out that politicians are both a service and a product...
Nobody's talking about installing a service-detecting tax machine at ISPs to detect VoIP connections and tax them, so let's lose the "It's just another form of data" claims right here. What they're talking about taxing VoIP that replaces phone service, which is really a phone service that's delivered over VoIP rather than a standard POTS twisted pair.
It's still phone service. Phone service that's delivered over airwaves, and often is digital these days, is called cellular and that's been taxed since the day it started. Why does VoIP's phone service deserve an exemption?
On my phone bill, I pay almost 30% to fees and taxes. On VOIP, will they try to add FCC and associated infrastructure charges when the infrastructure is now irrelevant? I can understand paying a 911 tax (somewhat) but paying a charge that is supposed to cover the cost of the wires seems a bit ridiculous. I can't see them letting go of this money, both in taxes and in fees.
When was the last time you carried a box of VoIP out of a store or had it shipped by UPS... seems more like a service to me...
Nope.
Your ISP provides a service (internet connectivity).
VoIP is nothing more than the VoIP phone that you carry out of the store that enables you to use it for voice.
What you are saying is equivalent to proposing to tax people who buy fax machines or answering machines to get added value out of their (current) phone service, because "fax is a service" and "automated call answering" is a service.
Believing that giving more money to the government will reduce deficits is like believing that buying an alcoholic another drink will slake his thirst.
The only real way to solve this problem is to put measureable, non-revokable penalties on government officials who overspend - for example, by saying that Congress shall not be paid, nor accrue retirement benefits, during any year in which the government runs a deficit (and a deficit shall be defined simply as "spending more money than you took in", no more funny accounting tricks).
We must be able to run a deficit during times of crisis (think World War II), but there needs to be a strong disincentive to prevent perpetual crisis.
www.eFax.com are spammers
When you buy your VoIP software product that lets you make the calls... using the data transfer service of the internet
We could get rid of all all this tax bickering with a taxation plan that's been discussed for years but never taken seriously. Outlaw all taxes except sales tax. The federal government would impose a national sales tax on consumer purchases only, and would disburse an annual refund equal to the tax rate times whatever they say is the poverty level. ALL OTHER TAXES would be eliminated.
The flat refund is there to make the sales tax non-regressive, that is, to avoid disproportionally taxing the poor. To meet the federal budget the tax would have to be about 20%. If the federal govt defined poverty level income as $15,000/year, then everybody would get a $3000 refund, which means poor people get all their sales tax back, richer people get back only a fraction. It's a self-graduating tax scale using only 2 numbers, numbers not hidden in a forest of deductions, exemptions and loopholes.
Cash registers would tell you what your tax is every time you buy something. States would collect sales tax from retailers as they do now, and would turn over the feds' share. The IRS would shrink to a small office with only enough employees to deal with their counterparts in 50 states, rather than with 12 million businesses and over 100 million taxpayers. The maze of business taxes currently built into the price of everything would go away. There would be no income declaration forms, no 4000-page IRS code, no 105,000 IRS employees, no tax accountants, tax consultants, tax lawyers, tax lobbyists, etc. All of that mess would go away. Congress would have only 2 numbers to manipulate, and they would have to do it right out in the open.
Grab stats from your router every night and calculate bits sent/received and multiply by the cost per bit.
I mean...really....
Blar.