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Ban on Internet Access Tax Dies in Senate
Justen writes "The Associated Press is reporting (via Yahoo! News) that the bill to permanently ban federal and state taxes on the Internet, via the Internet Tax Freedom Act, has died in the Senate. 'The problem arose over the definition of 'Internet access' -- services that connect consumers to the Internet. The strongest proponents for a permanent ban want to make sure that all access technologies -- from phone lines to DSL to cable modems -- get equal freedom from taxation.'"
Don't worry, they -will- find a way to tax internet commerce. There is too much money to be made.
...includes VoIP
USE='clever' emerge -u sig
So that means that they can charge 5c for an incoming email if they wanted to? They BETTER outlaw spam... or people will have bills going like $20 more!
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
If they'd just called it the Preserve Access to Telecommunications and Required Infrastructure for Online Transactions (PATRIOT) act, it would have swept through both houses of Congress with little opposition. Haven't our legislators learned anything?!
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
The government is running scared, with the popularity of VoIP. With traditional switched phone systems, the government has all sorts of regulation (read: revenue). With VoIP; however, the regulation has gone away, simply because it is difficult, if not impossible to distinguish voice packets from data packets. Thus, the telcos see an easy route to fall under the radar of regulation.
Be careful what you wish for - regulation has its ups and downs, but I'm pretty sure I don't opt for NO regulation.
I realize regulation and taxation are two different entities, but the government doesn't often regulate that which it doesn't also tax.
So, should this pass? Who I am to say?
One ring to rule them all, and in the darkness named them...
I know its unpopular, but shouldnt internet shoping and what not be taxed? After all, they are still goods and services.
We've still gota pay tax to keep kids in school, our roads being repaired etc.
I think internet goods and services should be taxed, just like any other bloody good or service.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
(1) Subsections (a)(b)(e) and clasues (d)(c)(f) and (fee)(fie)(foe)(fum) state that, while (2)(a)(c) and (3)(1)(a)(b(c))(d)(e) must make (1) true.
Now you can clearly see why this post make sense. And if you can't then you obviously didn't see the modus operandi behind sections (1)(e)(v)(2)(a(b(c(e(2))))).
Silly rabitt
MoFscker
The power to tax is the power to destroy, and the American government will never allow unfettered access to free communication, First Ammendment rhetoric or no.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
Well, these are taxes that we are talking about here. The only difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to taxes is that the Democrats are a bit more public about liking to tax people. They use those funds to support "public services". Yet, both parties use taxes to fund many secret projects that cost Americans countless amounts of money, but most of those you don't hear about on the news. Anyways, that's besides the point. The fact that a bill like this came from the two party system is a shock enough to me.
Sure, the Act probably was just created to make it look like the folks on Capitol Hill were staying busy. Hell, I've watched SPAN at random and I saw an extremely long debate about how Roberto Clemente should be honored when they should be working. But, doesn't it just piss you off how, even if this was a broad-based ban (and I don't mean broad = woman), that they would still fight over it? Good God, they just won't leave anything alone. It wouldn't fucking kill them to keep taxes away from the internet, period!
This just goes to show you that Congress has a raging boner to tax you, and it's not one that is going to go down anytime soon.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
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?
Well, according to a CNET article, some senators are saying they will be negotiating over the weekend and return to the topic next week. So maybe it's not quite dead yet.
Like it or not, taxation is the basis for a stable society. No tax, no government. No government, no authority. No authority, breakdown of civil society.
Although citizens naturally prefer low-tax regimes, sometimes it's just silly: look at California's budget to see what "low tax at any price" does.
The internet is so significant, and carries so much trade, that taxation is inevitable and so long as it's sensible and not punitive, why not?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
How come that rocket scientists are always supposed to know the right answer to everything? Yes, I know, it's just a figure of speech, but why rocket scientists? Why not mathematicians or phycisists? Has it something to do with religion? Ideas, anyone?
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
They should pass this, seriously. You dont even have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.
Ok, first off, I'm opposed to tax in all it's forms - federal, state, property, you name it, I don't want to pay more than I have to. I'll follow that by saying that I'll bitch, moan, kvetch, vote against and otherwise harrass any of my representatives who tried to institute an internet tax.
All of that said, I don't think the senate has any right to pass this. Why? Doesn't our constitution say something about "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people". I hate taxes, but I hate the constant increase of federal control into what should be local or state matters even more.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
After talking it over with my Cisco 800, it too agress that it needs its own equal freedom and shouldn't pay any taxes because after all (as it told me) it's "only a damn router for crying out loud".
GET perfidious.org/shadow|perl
MoFscker
Without those taxes, poor Principal S. would make only $100,000/year instead of the $147,000/year he has become accustomed to.
Without those taxes, the high school football team might not be able to afford new lockers this year, instead waiting until next year.
Without those taxes, Echelon/Carnivore might have been made by Microsoft, and be less efficient in their violations of our right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
Without those taxes, Iraq might not get the money Bush wants to give it, and every last one of us would have $300 left in our pockets not taken as taxes.
I'd love to see the government cut back to a mandatory 5% tax for the state and 5% tax for the nation on all income, with absolutely no taxes on anything else. Maybe then they'd stop trying to tax every last thing.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
This isn't to advocate taxing the Internet, but it strikes me as completely arbitrary to completely ban taxing the Internet and not, say, ban taxing the telephone system (which is arguably more important to its users - there are more landline users than Internet users, and I suspect we're close to a point that there are more cellphone users than landline users in the US - that situation is already true in most of the rest of the world, developed and undeveloped.) If such bans are going into place, they need to cover more than a specific globally accessable TCP/IP network.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
First of all unless both paries are within the same state it should be clearly untaxable without the explicit concent of congress. It would be interstate commerce. Of course looking at the track record of the supreme court lately...
One thing I don't get the basis for the state of the customer collecting the tax money. Either congress was bought off sometime in the past or the supreme court messed up. It should be clearly the state the bussiness is in. Although if that were I case I think there might be at least some basis for taxation. Taxation from the customers state is clearly for the political/economic reason that bussiness would move to states with lower or no taxation as should be the case. Of course many of those states have higher income and property taxes to compensate so bussinesses would have to balence many factors.
The only compromise I can see is if federal goverernment imposed an interstate sales tax and redistributed said money amoung the states. It would be divied equally, by population, by where the purchasers reside or by taxation rates or a combination of many factors. That way it might not be as much money as the states would otherwide get it would but they would get something and bussinesses would have an easier job of bookkeeping and paying those taxes.
With VoiceXML and ENUM every POTS device becomes an internet access device. Does this means that every mail order retailer that currently collects sales taxes (due to local point-of-presense sales tax laws) can stop collecting those taxes?
I suspect that the senate found it rather hard to create a clear demarcation between commerce based on "internet access" versus commerce based on traditional, taxed categories of custmer interactions.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Unfortunately, the Senate is having a problem with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee trying to use classified intelligence as political weapons. If Senators had Americans as their priority instead of their seats and their party, we might have some sort of sensible legislation pass in Congress.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Yes, businesses pay more taxes in California: obviously the money that is lost from some of the lowest property and sales taxes in the US has to come from somewhere.
My point is that the Californian citizenry has voted itself low taxes on the obvious things - property, purchases, and ignored the consequences of this: higher taxes on the most unstable sources, namely commerce which can easily move to other places that are gentler.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
How would that be measured. It sounds like a mess to me, and more like a gangsta's paradise (again).
Is just a mess.
Look at Albania, Africa,... an armed citizenry is an accident waiting to happen.
LOL, Heinlein had some interesting POVs but did not look closely around at his own planet.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Would this bill read a lot better if things like commerce and minor were define in some official library of congress dictionary?
It seems like they are saying that for three years, no tax authority can impose additional tax on providing network access or commerce on networks. But there are so many words, I'm not sure.
One more thing, Since every legal seller and every legal buyer has an address, why shouldn't the half the value of the transaction be taxed as if the sale occurred at the sellers address and half at the buyers address?
How about: pass the bill as it is now, then pass an ammendment later on.
"Storm's coming"
"Don't worry, I put up a steel barrier."
"Steel? I wanted Titanium!"
"Oh, okay, I'll tear down the steel one until we can get the titanium one built"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Why a difference? Because some places (like Colorado) have insanely complicated sales tax codes. Where I live, the tax districts include: state, county, city, regional transportation district, cultural facilities district, a special downtown district, and probably some others. Each district's tax depends on the nature of the goods (food, clothing, electronics, services, etc. all have different tax rates in different jurisdictions). The difference is that a local retailer can (with difficulty) figure out their tax liability based on their own address. But what address do you use for an internet retailer when decide which local sales taxes to apply?
The only solution with internet sales taxes is to use the address of the recipient. And that means that each internet retailer must figure out which of all the overlapping tax districts EVERY customer is in and the calculate the tax on each item based on the type of item and the district's tax structure and then remit them to the appropriate agency.
Its not as easy as it looks.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I take a look at my life,
And realize malls are all wrong.
Cause I've been shopping online for so long,
That even my government thinks my money is gone.
But I ain't never paid a tax if they didn't deserve it,
May be treated like a felon but you know that's unheard of,
You better watch how you're buying
And where you're spending
Or you and your homies might be federal pen-ding
Been spending most our lives,
Doing all our shopping online,
Keep spending most our lives
Doing all our shopping online.
(With apologies to Coolio
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
[devil's advocate]
An internet tax could be a good idea. There are many technical areas the money could go to:
1) Improve the government's online services. For example, make it so we can perform more DMV actions on the web instead of waiting 5 hours in line.
2) Improve the technical capability of libraries. Get some better/quicker search engines for browsing the catalogues.
3) Fund grants to colleges doing useful research (anti-spam R&D, security, etc...)
4) Fund the anti-electronic fraud teams in the DOJ.
[/devil's advocate]
I mean, I am correct in assuming the ground telephone system is starting to die. It'll take a long time, but there just isn't as much use as a cable line, which can easily handle telephones and whatever else you throw at it. It parallels the situation of getting rid of the big polluters: it's worse for everyone, but they have friends to keep things how they are.
I agree. What the hell is the problem with our government? Are they really this stupid? Internet access means Internet access, be it cable, DSL, dial-up, whatever.
I am so sick of electing idiots to run our country!
As much as I believe in federalism, this is clearly a case of interstate commerce. Allowing states to tax e-commerce would be the equivalent of allowing states to impose tariffs on each other.
On the other hand, states will probably increase income taxes and probably make them more progressive, or they will drastically cut services. I also don't like the idea of the federal government telling states what to do.
I'm not sure which one I think is the best solution.
There went the last reason why I bought stuff online. What's next, taxing the air we breath? I guess it was just a matter of time. If there is a way to tax something you can be sure the government (terrorists of taxation) WILL make it happen no matter how muc we object to it.
"If shit was worth something, poor people would be born with no ass holes." Eddie Murphy
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I second this. We piss away money rather than give it back to the people. I think that it should be up to the people to decide how to spend money, not the government. Sure, support the basics required to run a country, but let people decide how their money is best spent.
Anyways, why are you asking me for proof when you're not showing any off yourself? I'd really like to know what your proof is. You act as if people should automatically take what you say as fact. If I'm wrong, prove it, don't just say it.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Just to note, that last paragraph wasn't towards you, Anonymous Coward, it was towards nomadic.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Didn't you guys start a revolution over this kind of shit?
What services will a government a thousand miles away offer my business in return for the taxes they are attempting to collect?
I thought that's "taxation without representation" - Isn't there something in your constitution that outlaws this?
That's because you're just looking at the obvious taxes. The one's on your paycheck and the one's printed out on your receipts. There are many hidden taxes that are not as easy to see. The sin taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling. Taxes on gasoline. Taxes that are levied against businesses that they kindly pass along to you in the price of their goods and services or pay you a lower wage because of. All these taxes may not be broken down in a nice, easily digestible manner, but they all add up to be about half of your income going to pay taxes in one form or another.
Whatever, all companies will simply move their server's to new hampshire..
MABASPLOOM!
you forgot the refence..
John( 16:4 )
looks like code to me
Although I can't explain it in detail, I can give you some problems that the folks in Washington haven't solved.
So you want to tax internet transactions and allow states to do the same? Which state gets the revenue, the state of the receiver or sender? It the transaction is routed through a node in Colorado, does Colorado get a cut? If you are taxing the sender and they operate in a high-tax state, what happens if they move their server to a low tax state?
Why isn't this an incentive to move MORE technology jobs overseas? After all if internet activity is being taxed in the US, put your servers in Burma and hire a Burmese staff to administer them....viola!
The problem is that nobody has figured out how to reconcile the provincial nature of local taxation with the nebulous, location-less, nature of the internet. The ban on internet taxes was an acknowledgment of this fact and an attempt to prevent state and local governments from screwing everything up by enacting a menagerie of little taxes. The problems are still unsolved.
Except that Congress does have the right to regulate interstate commerce under the Constitution. From Article 1, Section 8;
Congress shall have the power... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes
You'll note that the internet is only "tax free" when you're not dealing with a vendor in the same state as you. So Congress does have the Constitutional authority to ban internet tax, and this power has been with the Congress since the nation was founded.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Again, the article is not addressing local state or city tax liabilities....it's addressing INTERNET COMMERCE. Just by purchasing something online is what they want to tax...and on the federal level. Your local tax complications have nothing to do with it.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
If governments don't tax any Internet commerce, how will it pay for the services it offers to the Internet? Like emerging spam legislation, FBI fraud investigations, business certification, infrastructure protection, research, and everything else that contributes to a running Internet? Once most transactions are Internet, not postal, or voice/phone, where will the money come from? Do you want the police, fire, medical, education, and every other service to suffer, because taxes on the commerce that they protect are diverted from their upkeep, to subsidize government Internet services? Surely the Internet offers a break in the hypocritical morass of tax status quo, but "no taxes" won't rationalize the service model, it will just destroy it.
--
make install -not war
There has been a ban in place for awhile. The problem is that it's a temporary ban. This new bill would just have made it permanent.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
How about we abandon sales tax -- and just jack up the state income taxes a nudge? Think of all the computational power and paper shuffling involved with taxing my stupid 99cent burger to be 1.07 --- And all the time wasted counting out the 93 cents --- We should just abandon sales taxes anyway- they are a bad idea... And even as it stands now, no body understands how interstate taxation is supposed to work anyway.
Next thing you know the RIAA will ask for its own tax to recoup the supposed costs of piracy. They can then try to make WIFI networks impossible due to complicated tax regulations. Soon the government will have to monitor internet routers to properly access taxes, etc.
"The strongest proponents for a permanent ban want to make sure that all access technologies -- from phone lines to DSL to cable modems -- get equal freedom from taxation."
Given the amount of taxes and fees I pay to the govt. for phone service, and given that phone and data service will be indistinguishable from a network perspective sometime soon, I doubt the govt. going to give up this cash cow without a fight.
Vote for Pedro
They need to focus first on getting a permanent ban on data transfer taxes, i.e. taxing based on units such as megabytes transferred. Then once that is done, tbey can haggle over the other details. A bit tax would be the most destructive thing for the Internet in the USA.
When private parties such as web hosting services charge for bandwidth used, competitive pressures and improved technology make them charge less per megabyte as the years pass on. But whatever tax rate a government sets on bandwith usage, even if it is reasonable at first, within a few years it could become ridiculously exhorbitant as broadband and bandwith-heavy uses of the Internet become more commonplace. You may be able to afford to download a 650MB ISO today, but forget about downloading Linux in 2010 when it occupies a 50GB super-duper DVD.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
As if we need to subsidise shipping companies, i.e., waste fuel. Back when the constitution was written (prior to pony express etc.) it might have made sense.
And of course CEOs and big corporations will not care about any kind of net taxes.
No doubt it will kill the small solo businessperson. But then again, that small solo businessperson does not feed the Senator's bulldog.And of couse John BlueBlood the CEO does not want the small solo businessperson crashing the online party, so therefore expect more taxes on the Internet, formerly known as the Great Equalizer.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Wait? Isn't that backwards? Wouldn't it be easier to base the tax on the location of the seller, since they only have to keep 1 set of codes on hand?
SMOP, and probably not all that tough anyway. The national chains already have to do this.
No, no, no. You play a violin at an entire industry's funeral, not a viola!! ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?