California Takes A Last Swing At VoIP

JamesB writes "News.com's Ben Charny reports that two California cities want to tax Internet telephony. This news comes on the eve of the FCC ruling on whether federal regulations will preempt local ones."

Comments

An alternative view

[bunyip]

While it's easy to say that we shouldn't tax this or tax that, I'm reminded of Ron Kirk, when he was mayor of Dallas, who quipped, "when you are sitting at home in your virtual world and you have a short circuit and a fire breaks out, do you want us to send a virtual fire truck or a real big red fire truck?" My house was hit by lightning last year and the city of Southlake was kind enough to send a real fire engine, not just email a JPG or something.

IMHO - we need an overhaul of the tax system, I don't believe that it can be efficient to have dozens of different entities with the power to levy taxes. There's a cost to society, although it does keep all those lawyers and accountants employed.

Re:But do you get an indian phone #?

[mobilebuddha]

dunno about the others, but i use voip mainly for outbound calls - outbound calls to western europe and canada that i am saving a lot of money. most of my friends are the same way: 1) for the friends in US, they call me on my cell, it doesn't save them any more penny to call me on the voip line than it is to call me on my cell -> may actually be cheaper if calling cell if they are using the same carrier since that use mobile to mobile minutes. 2) for the people outside of US, calling a cell vs. some random # makes no differences at all (at least not to my knowledge). they are more likely to reach me if they call me on cell. most of these calls occur at night, where i have nights & weekends anyway.