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Senator Warns of Email Tax This Fall
cnet-declan writes "State and local governments in Washington this week began an all-out lobbying push for the power to tax the Internet, according to our article at News.com. A new Senate bill would usher in Internet sales taxes, and the Federation of Tax Administrators (representing state tax collectors) advised senators at a hearing on Wednesday not to renew a temporary moratorium limiting broadband taxes that expires in November. One irked Republican senator warned that unless the moratorium is renewed, we could start seeing email taxes by the end of the year. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey blames it on the Democrats taking over, as do Yahoo and eBay lobbyists. Is this a non-hoax version of bill 602P?"
I thought you DID pay a tax when you used a land line phone? For each and every call you make a small portion goes to state and federal tax coffers.
That makes sense because Mr. Enzi, the bill's sponser, who is listed at the very top of the bill as its sponser, is a Republican.
Yes. That's right. Republicans want big government in your computer and want big government's hand in your wallet.
nor is it a set group of people, places, etc.
Just how do they expect to enforce their levy of taxes?
Trying to tax the internet is somewhat like trying to tax other forms of communication. The best they'll be able to do is tax the businesses that provide a service to connect to the internet (telcos and ISPs).
That reminds me of something... wasn't the Stamp Act one of those "taxation without representation" things that pissed off the revolutionaries in the 13 colonies? Hmmm...
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Is the people need to stop electing idiots.
Do I get hit with a $70,000 tax bill?
What happens when I'm in a coffee shop using an anonymous mailer?
Do I have to attach my credit card number to each e-mail and, as a corrallary, can I not send e-mail 10 days later when all credit cards are canceled until further notice?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Spammers won't give a shit or report their activities. So, they won't be the ones paying the tax - even though they do the majority of emailing.
However, legitimite businesses and users would be more likely to attempt to pay this tax - which would mean keeping track of outgoing emails.. to how many people.. resends.. attachments.. sizes?
Come on Congress! Get a fucking grasp of the ideas you're trying to make into law before you even talk about acting on them. Congress seems to be full of a bunch of morons making snap decisions based on ideas they cannot begin to comprehend.
The only thing Congress should even talk about taxing is Internet-based sales.. Taxing data that essentially costs ZERO should be taxed at a flat rate, to be fair, which would mean ZERO tax income. They could even set the rate at 500% for all I care.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
There is no mention or even hint that this is going to be used on email. The republicans are only saying that because it DOES effect their big backers, big business, with a vested interest in making money. This is going to effect a number of people like Amazon, but for others like Apple, who already DO charge and pay state sales tax, this is going to mean nothing.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Although this particular bills sponsor is Republican, if you follow the other story links the general thinking is that by one means or another a house and congress with a larger democratic population is more likley to rescind the tax break.
Yes there are also Republicans that support this, but in aggregate in previous years the Republican members have been more inclined to keep the tax break. We'll know if the speculation about the Democrats wanting to break it actually is true or not if it survives another year...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All the articles state is that it's more likely to happen that the tax moratorium may end under the Democratic controlled house and senate, than if the government was composed of more Republican members.
;-)
Looks like it's just a cheap call to try to get some votes and cheap political points in. After all, the next round of elections will probably be heavily Internet based, and they're only a year away. What better way to rally people who haven't decided yet by saying their precious Internet is not going to be the tax-free haven it once was? (Especially given how the current Republican in power is potentially making life difficult for Republicans in swing states. Might as well try to score some cheap political points amongst bloggers and stuff when they post "OH NOES, INTERNET TAXES!!!!" when it's just a bill being discussed, and chances are better that the moratorium may end under a Democrat-controlled senate. They never actually said what chances are, after all. If it was likely to end with a 1% chance under Republicans and 1.5% under Democrats, well, chances are better (but no way it'll pass)...
You may now resume your "OH NOES, INTERNET TAXES ARE HERE!!!!" posts.
It's similar to what the Dems pulled with the "bringing back the draft" BS they tried to claim Republicans were planning during the 2004 election (Dems were the ones who proposed twin bills for it, but then voted against it cause it was just a campaign tool to get college students to pledge votes for Kerry).
Now Republicans seem to be doing the same thing. Propose a BS bill, then claim "it's the Democrats' fault!"
I F-ING HATE POLITICS
I like basketball!!1!
From a bricks and mortar perspective, *stopping* the shipment of goods shipped over state lines would be a good thing. I can see many states setting up tax systems that are so complicated and expensive it effectively shuts down direct marketers. (internet and catalog)
The thing is, the constitution is clear on this. The states don't have a right to charge taxes on stuff shipped across state lines. Why are we even having this discussion?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Because Congress (both state and federal) likes to keep the Supreme Court on its toes? It certainly seems like it sometimes.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
In some states you are required to declare out of state purchases (Internet purchases) in some form or another. A lot of people ignore it though or argue the interpretation. Wisconsin also requires out of state purchases to be declared on income taxes.
1 8,1,6878957.column
http://www.revenue.wi.gov/faqs/ise/usetax.html
http://www.boe.ca.gov/pdf/pub79b.pdf
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-perfin18mar
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
a republican lying, that's a new one.
You don't think democrats lie too? You're cute. How old are you, 14?
Because if there is one thing our government will work hard to to its lighten your wallet.
You talk like the Constitution is able to limit government's power somehow. I guess you haven't been paying attention, because that hasn't been true for some time now.
...income tax was voted in, and NEVER voted out, I don't see taxes not happening. I'll fight it and we all should. But don't allow the Coke and Pepsi parties to point fingers and distract you. Putting any political animal in charge of any taxes is like handing control of the local CVS(drug store) to the local drug addict. Dillinger once was asked why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money's at." Smart man. If he had been in politics he'd have gone far.
When someone spends $40,000,000 on a $400,000 a year job, you can assume they have been corrupted. Watch them like a hawk. Always.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
>>> I thought you DID pay a tax when you used a land line phone? For each and every call you make a small portion goes to state and federal tax coffers.
And I already pay a variety of local and state taxes on my internet monthly bill.
Republicans raise taxes --> that's really lowering taxes.
Democrats don't raise taxes --> that's really raising taxes.
ORWELLIZATION COMPLETE.
gg gop
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
-You have been modded appropriately-
Q: How do you know if a politician is lying?
A: His lips are moving.
And that is about as close to bi-partisan cooperation as Congress will ever get.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
2) ensuring the "current" level of taxes imposed by states; 3) thus reducing property taxes
2 has never ensured 3. Ever.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Actually, certain taxes are different. Taxing gas to pay for road construction is more-or-less a pay-per-use system. It's not irrational at all.
Taxing property to pay for a fire department to protect property is similar.
Lots of taxes make sense and lots of others don't.
Well there were several things mentioned in the article. While taxing email is technically unfeasible not to mention rather ridiculous, they definitely want to tax commerce that utilizes the Internet to work more efficiently.
For example, if you buy a book off Amazon.com, Amazon would pay local taxes to the "streamlined sales tax" system they're proposing. Of course, the consumer would bear the expenses of such a tax.
They (I'm lumping all the tax maggots into one pronoun) also want to impose a monthly internet use tax, i.e. a DSL tax.
What the Dems don't get is that the supply side approach is much better as was demonstrated during the 90s when many successful companies were founded such as Amazon and EBay. Although local sales taxes are avoided, these companies nonetheless contribute mightily to the tax base through employee income taxes, employee purchase of local homes, cars, food, travel services, and other products, corporate income tax, capital gains and other stock transaction related taxes, etc.
The internet revolution demonstrated the superiority of supply side economics. The successful companies generate the most revenue streams for the government in an organic manner. Imposing a regressive, universal tax on transactions will probably not destroy the current giants but will certainly discourage new companies from flourishing. Instead, incompetence will be rewarded because local governments will get all kinds of revenue they didn't deserve and will become totally dependent on it.
Then there are the unknown future uses of the internet that most of us can't even conceive. What about internet-based medical care? A surgeon on another continent operating on a patient via precision remote control, or physicians providing consultative services remotely--all of this will get taxed, and the middleware companies that are trying to market these services will get taxed to death before they can even get off the ground.
Monthly internet connection tax--what a slippery slope! Next they'll be taxing by the byte. Ultimately the cost of doing business for everyone will go up, including bricks and mortar stores which are also dependent on the internet today to run their businesses. Salaries will necessarily go down, people will have less discretionary income as a result, and the U.S. economy will be further Europeanized.
It will then become even more economically attractive to outsource manufacturing and service jobs. This is all to China and India's benefit. Thank you Hilary and the Dems for destroying the last bits of American competitiveness, and thank you to the American people for voting these imbeciles in.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Close.
Congress actually likes the idea of having more money to spend on projects REQUIRED to keep this nation running, while still having miscellaneous funds to keep its pork projects intact.
Sorry, but I'm of the opinion that if they can't account for at least 99.9999% of the Fiscal spending, there SHOULD NOT be ANY new taxes. If they can account for at least that much, fine. They can look at taxing something.
I don't BUY the line that we don't have the ability to track where the money goes. We've been doing this for 200+ years. WE SHOULD HAVE IT DOWN BY NOW!!!!!!!!!
What are you talking about.
ALL regions are not under the jurisdiction of any government.
Are you referring to all regions of the united states? in that case, companies will simply pull their servers out of the united states. or insert your preferred country or limit of jurisdiction for the government you mean.
Theres a wide world out there sir.
Ice Cream has no bones.
I can't imagine running a small internet business and having to keep track of the sales tax regulations for every state.
Which makes it so only large corporations can participate and see a profit. Which leaves lots of room for shady backroom deals and centralized monitoring and control. Which is consistent with the values of every politician in the USA.
This bill will pass.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
how would you even begin to go about taxing email.. seeing as the smtp stack is as secure as an unlocked car in NYC, and we can barely verify where email really comes from as is, how in the world are they going to tax it.
How do you think the bulk of spammers work right now? Ever notice how many of the spams you get don't even seem to have you address attached to them anywhere and come from fake senders. Seems like this is going to encourage everyone to do that. Secondly, how do they have the right to tax us for using something that isn't theirs. Next they are going to charge me a tax for taking money out of my own wallet?
I think there would be a lot of issues and hurdles ethically speaking, but the practicality seems flawed. I don't see how they can do it without violating a lot of privacy rights, agreements, and stepping on a whole lot of feet. That or we will all get our email servers relocated to somewhere else.
this seems like double taxing for the same thing. You pay tax for internet bandwidth, now they want more for certain types of data sent on the bandwidth?
I think its very short sighted to try to pin this on a particular political party however. This kind of stupidity tends to follow more from the uneducated fools in the party than the party's grand agenda itself. Frankly this is the kind of thing I'd more expect from Republicans, who would try to censor the email while they were at it
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
What these politicians (or techno-morons if you'd like) don't understand is that we, as ISP customers, are already being charged. This is because we pay a monthly SERVICE FEE (including several Federal and Local taxes) that gives us access to communicate over the internet, regardless of the content and potential end-use of said content.
They're simply trying to equate EMAIL to SNAIL MAIL, in which you get charged on a per item basis. However, unlike snail mail, no ADDITIONAL equipment or human resources are necessary (ie. truck drivers, fuel, etc. in the case of snail mail) to deliver email.
Just another way to squeeze more taxes out of the working stiff. People complain about Canada's high tax rate (approx. 40-50%), but they haven't bothered to take into account how much taxes Americans pay outside of Federal Income taxes. I'm sure it's up there as well, but we don't have anything to show for it (not even universal BASIC health care.) Granted, that's another topic altogether, but it had to be thrown in there.
Please save your "Love it or Leave it!" shit speech, because if that were the case, our forefathers would've gone somewhere else to establish our "Colony". Good luck to us all... Interesting times are definitely ahead of us!!!
Where do I begin?
One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail.
Who elects these idiots?. Email is free! I suggest that senatorial prospects started submitting their resumes for election or taking at least take a iq test.
Want to tax the internet? Please meet these requirements first:
Rich- Develop better ways to tax those that control 90% of nation's wealth
Accountability- Stop giving President Bush a blank check. The man couldn't manage a lemonade stand. Watch every dime he spends like a hawk! Pinch the quarter till the eagle screams!
Remove the Pork!- Stop building bridges to nowhere.
Cutback the military- The military is absolute supreme leader in wasting money. I am "shocked and awed" by their how adept they are at wasting money. Some admiral get his newly designed toy aircraft carrier and yet we can't keep rats out of Walter Reed. I have one word: Oversight.
Once that is accomplished. Tax the internet in this order
Porn and gambling- I might get modded troll with this crowd, but if you haven't figure out how to get porn for free, then you need to be taxed. Moreover, taxing vice is an easy sell. Think cigarette taxes.
Tax internet commerce if you want, but only if a state tax hasn't been collected first.
Forget email! Have have your kid explain the internet to you before you come up with any other bright ideas.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Let's cut to the chase:
If it's really a "use tax", then why don't you pay it on things that you purchase in-state and "use" in that state? i.e. why isn't it applied to stuff that you've paid sales tax on. (I know that's the way the law was written, but what's the logic?)
Calling it a "use" tax is just an end-run around the constitution. It's not the first time, and not the last that government will do this.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
If it were, in fact, a "tax" then that $2.33 would be handed over to the FCC. It isn't. The fact is, 99% of what you pay for your phone goes right in the telco's pockets. The state and federal taxes are the only thing they hand over. (ala sales tax) All those "fees" are bullshit padding of your bill. In every case I've ever checked it was a way to get around tariffs -- they cannot legally change the service price, but they can add "cost recovery" fees and other crap to increase the total monthly bill.
While that may be true, it *has* been reported to be a series of tubes. All the government has to do is sit at one end of the tubes and charge you a tax before you're allowed to get any of the internets that come out.
Seriously, though, this sort of thing displays the baffling-and-at-the-same-time-unsurprising lack of comprehension that $GOVERNMENT seems to have with regard to anything more technically sophisticated than a pen. This is obviously impractical on many fronts.
You want to tax internet connections? On what basis? Bytes transferred? That's unfair to Grandma with a pwned Win98 box (unbeknownst to her, of course). Flat rate? That's unfair to low-income earners who can barely afford internet access in the first place so Johnny can get his homework done. And what is "the internet" anyway? If I send an email from my desk to the guy in the next cube, is that taxable? Probably not because it's a private corporate network. How about if I sent an email to my next-door neighbour on the same ISP? The whole transfer lives on the ISP's "private" network, so technically it never hit "the internet", or did it? It's really difficult to adequately define when you're accessing "the internet" versus "some network", and taxing every corporate or, hell, residential network would be completely impractical.
If they try it, though, I propose lining the Canadian side of the 49th Parallel with high-powered wifi antennas pointed south.
Shipping goods across the border? Suppose the goods originated in, say, California and arrived at my place in Alberta, Canada... do I owe California state sales tax? (assuming California even has state sales tax. Pretend it does if not). I already owe fees to customs and Canadian federal sales tax and whatever percentage my bank decides to charge me for the currency conversion (and possibly ludicrous brokerage fees to whichever company did the shipping). This additional sales tax might just make it not worth buying. Maybe it doesn't count as an "internet sale" if I phone them instead? Can I apply a refund as a non-resident if I go through the requisite paperwork hassle? Seems like a pretty good way to kill international trade originating in states with a sales tax -- sellers would just pack up and move to a state without sales tax. I bet the constituents will be happy with that one.
So don't panic guys. This is far too ill-conceived to see the light of day (or to have any real effect if it does).
His opinion on those things do not matter. He is a constitutionalist, and is of the correct position that the federal government has no business in legislating anything related to abortion, gays and "all the usual stuff". States are the ones supposed to deal with such matters.
You talk like the Constitution is able to limit government's power somehow. I guess you haven't been paying attention, because that hasn't been true for some time now.We must continue to talk about it, because complacency is not an option.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/quotes.c
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Except that he gives back part of his congressional budget every year. Neither does he participate in the congressional retirement plan.
Besides, I don't know how much more "no" you can vote than "no". Would you rather have a congressman that voted "yes" on every pay increase?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!