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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.'"
I never could have anticipated this.
We already got a telephone tax to fund the Spanish-American War (1898). I wouldn't be surprised if we have a broadband tax to fund the Iraqi-American War, too.
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)
Yeah, but here's the context:
We will need more taxes revenues to finance our spending like a drunken sailor. We should give you a justification for it, seeing as how we waste so much money, billions literally fall through the cracks. But we might be able to slip it in a way that you won't notice, like so many other taxes you pay... indirectly. If not and you complain, we will suggest that you are unpatriotic.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
...that I'm using my neighbors WiFi network.
Network name: Linksys
No wep key...
Woo hoo! No cable fees for soft_guy!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
If this tax goes towards anything other than the service that is BEING taxed then maybe its time for a tea party.
Yeah, let's throw all our routing equipment into the nearest body of water! That'll show 'em!
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.
We could argue about the merits of income tax versus sales tax; I worry about the implementation of a saes tax.
But if you insist on an income tax, it must be a progressive one. And no, a flat tax is not progressive. By definition a tax is only progressive if the rate increases as your income increases. A flat tax is not progressive.
Now the reason why a progressive income tax is essential to "fairness" is the very obvious fact that 25% of the income of a person barely making ends meat is much more significant -- read financially damaging -- than 25% of the income of a person who's biggest financial worry is whether they will be able to send all of their kids to Ivy League schools if they don't get scholarships. It is not "fair" at all to expect someone who can't afford medical care for their children to support society with the same contribution as a wealthy person.
Flat tax sounds good on paper, so long as that paper has no figures representing reality and the difficulties faced by the poor. But the fact is that a flat tax necessarily means that the burden of supporting society is placed more heavily on the poor. A progressive tax attempts to alleviate this by taking more from those who can afford more. I pay a greater percentage in taxes than a lot of people, yet I consider this to be imminently fair. That's just my opinion. It isn't my opinion that flat taxes place a greater burden on lower income families though.
The enemies of Democracy are
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