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Possible Taxes For Broadband Users
Morganis101 writes "CNET News reports that some broadband users might have to endure new universal service taxes. From the article: 'The suggestions came as lawmakers started debating changes to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which created the framework for the Universal Service Fund. The USF should continue to be industry funded, but the base of contributors should be expanded to all providers of two-way communications, regardless of technology used, to ensure competitive neutrality, a bipartisan coalition of rural legislators said in a June 28 letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, which will be drafting the rewrites. That means companies providing broadband services such as VoIP over telephone wires would also have to pay into the fund.'"
At what point does the government need money from me because I'm on a privately run network? The internet is not owned or operated or maintained by any nation, so I don't see why we should pay taxes. (exceptions of course being things like govt. websites, but they are a different case)
The funny thing is that war in Iraq is peanuts compared to all the other pork barrel stuff we the people subsidize.
$200 billion is some real money, but compared to trillions a year, it's chump change.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Just goes to show you that when our "elected representatives" look at us, the electorate, all they see are pockets to be picked. Whose idea was it to concentrate all that power in the hands of the very few, anyways?
I already pay 7.65% for FICA (ie, Social Security), but were I to run my own business and turn a profit, I would have to pay double that, since I would be both employee and employer. Of the money I get after FICA, state and federal income taxes, and state mandated unemployment insurance, I then get charged 8.25% in sales taxes, surcharges and strange fees for my electric, water, gas, and telephone bills (including that 3% tax left over from the Spanish American war, which was well over a century ago), and twice a year, I have to fork over money to the local county for the privilege of owning tangible property.
And for this I get: roads that still need fixing, bribery and corruption scandals that cost taxpayers money, ever-increasingly complex laws that require you to have a law degree just for self-defense, school districts that wail and complain that they need bond money, but then turn around and spend the money building shopping plazas on top of abandoned oil fields, leading to the project being declared unusable, and of course, the innumerable tax breaks and pork-barrel projects doled out by our collective congresscritters to keep their districts happy at the expense of the rest of the United States.
It's a pity that elections couldn't take place in late April, say a week after tax day. Oh well, I might as well start working on my taxes for NEXT year...
Um, 40% of the USF is marked for the E-Rate program which is littered with mismangement and fraud. The LAST thing they need is more money.
CNet had an article a while back about it.
Your tax breakdown is BS. Maybe you didn't read the link I posted, but the number of rich people who pay no taxes just increased to 115% in the past year alone. How do you explain that? Their productivity?
Or some pedantic distinction between revenue and profit? What's your point? Corporations don't pay taxes on income, they pay it on profit. And anyone who's paying 90% of their income to make it is the kind of fool who makes $1M a year only by theft - and they don't pay taxes. Like those people paying no taxes, or the 50% of corporations which have paid no taxes since 1998. Where are you getting this "generating wealth honestly" BS?
To be more precise about your BS talking point justifying the free ride you want out of the tax system: The top 50% had 86.2% of the income. Sure, they paid 96% of the taxes, on "only" 86% of the income. But the bottom 50% had and income under $29K. Consider the overhead we all must pay for food, shelter, energy, clothing, which comes out of that first $29K. After that, it's all Mercedes, beach houses, caviar... or rice & beans. Even if $20K is overhead, that remaining $9K ($600:month) at the bottom is being taxed at about the same rate as the remaining several million at the top. Especially when we're talking about the very top: the top 1% have about 125% the income of the bottom 50%.
FWIW, I'll see your irrelevant "Wes Clark", and raise you the relevant Grover Norquist. Who hates taxes, but not as much as the government itself, the "beast" he hopes to "starve", "until it's small enough to drown in the bathtub". You're going to love that, when there's no government to tax you, but also nothing stopping corporations from ripping every cent out of your hide.
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make install -not war