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Senate Mulls Internet Tax Ban - VoIP Exempt?

Posted by timothy on from the semantic-games-played-by-swine dept.

securitas writes "eWEEK's Caron Carlson reports that this week the U.S. Senate will vote on renewing an Internet tax ban, but voice over IP (VoIP) may be taxed. The bill renews a state/local ban on taxing Internet services like VoIP. The federal government wants to define VoIP as a software application exempt from taxes while most states see it as an alternate form of telephony subject to telecommunications taxes. House and Senate bills that define VoIP as a software application have already been introduced but may not be voted on before the Internet tax vote."

2 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Nice try by sploo22 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Erm, yeah... except that's a four-year-old HOAX!

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    Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
  2. VOIP by maitai · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think people are being to broad with their interpretation of VOIP. When I think of VOIP I think of SIP, H232, Telephony over IP, etc. I don't consider say, Unreal Tournament 2004's voice support as VOIP.

    In that regard, if they want to tax VOIP providers as they do normal telco's I don't have a complaint, I'd assume that'd just be a given. But if they want to try and tax every program that could possibly send speech over the net then I'd be a bit annoyed (to put it lightly)

    I wouldn't consider Skype, Teamspeak, etc as VOIP from my point of view, I think of them as just another chat program. If it can tie into my phone, or someone elses, then it's VOIP.

    My Vonage account has recently had a new $1 tax added to it, so...