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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?"
They still don't get it, the Internet is not this easily defined thing that you can wrap thier minds around, its not about formats or drm or even email its about information. Anything thats describable as 1's and 0's can be transmitted over the internet, its like saying everytime you call a cab over a landline phone you have to pay a tax, uh no. How many ways can you now transmit info over the net now (?) its nearly infinite.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
So they plan on taxing things that don't make anybody any money? Or are they only taxing commercial e-mail?
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
we'll just tax the 1's and leave the 0's free?
If it's an out-bound tax, could it be used to make SPAM economically unrewarding?
put a toll meter on one of the Tubes. Voila!
If they start taxing Email I will just start using Gmail!
Now take that you bastards!
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.
maybe this would be an opportunity to take out some spammers a la Al Capone. Hit em with some tax fraud for all the wonderful pharmaceutical, mortgage, personal advices, etc. that everyone seems to need so desperately.
Is the people need to stop electing idiots.
If one protocol is taxed, we can push another protocol to take over. Imagine, if email is taxed, having the entire industry shift to a better system that is not regulated, and having the opportunity to design much-needed controls and authentication in to eliminate spam.
-- My Sig is a P228.
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
If Al Gore had invented the Internets as a bunch of dump trucks, it would be much easier to implement a tollbooth system. With all the maintenance it takes to clear up the tube system, it makes the true cost more abstract and difficult to quantify.
However, look at it this way - it will help create more government Internets jobs. Emails have to be cleaned because video packets leave color smudges on the envelopes; so many germs are passed on online money transactions and those UV cleaners have to be maintained; phishing sites are constantly scanned by Fish and Wildlife; and pr0n doesn't create itself.
This could be a good thing in the long run.
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.
That would only be one step at a time if you were starting with Ebmail or switching to F#mail, then G#mail.
At least G#mail is pretty upscale compared to Email.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
I just skimmed the bill linked in the summary... is it just me, or does this 1) not appear to apply to email whatsoever (it's not mentioned anywhere in the bill, though VOIP is) and 2) only applies to business doing $5 million USD or more in business a year.
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!
There are two separate things going on here.
First, the bill in the story has nothing to do with taxing internet email. It has to do with, specifically, sales taxes on goods purchased over the internet.
The second part of the story is about the temporary moratorium limiting broadband taxes which limits taxes on items such as email, web surfing, etc.
Needless to say, these things are completely different. Leave it to crap|net to mix them all up to get your feathers ruffled.
In the first case, the bill being sponsored by Mr Envi, I kind of understand where he is coming from. States and local governments get a lot of their revenue from sales tax. Since there has been an increasing number of purchases made online, state and local governments and losing out on that sales tax money, which means they need to raise other taxes (e.g. property, fuel) in order to compensate. This hurts everyone, even those that do not own computers, and especially hurts the elderly who live on limited income. This bill also simplifies how states collect taxes for retailers to reduce paperwork, and has an exemption for e-tailers that earn less than $5 million a year doing internet sales.
On the temporary moratorium limiting broadband taxes, this is something that has been renewed every couple of years for the last several under the Republican-led congress. The idea is that general broadband services are not taxed, such as email and web surfing, at the federal and state levels. It does not appear this will be renewed which means *new* taxes could (and probably will) be added to Internet users.
Now that it is clear...
While some may point out that Mr. Enzi is a Republican raising taxes, he's not so much raising taxes as he is 1) simplifying sales taxes; 2) ensuring the "current" level of taxes imposed by states; 3) thus reducing property taxes; 4) helping maintain state governments who are having financial problems due to lack of sales tax revenue.
On the other hand, the Democrats, if they do not renew the ban on broadband taxes, will be creating new taxes that will impact every internet user. These are not taxes that are being avoided or taxes that are being suppressed.... these are NEW taxes.. and we all know how the Democrats love their taxes!
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
...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
My PC is my e-mail server.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Brief Overview of Congressman Pauls Record
He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
When reality doesn't side with your politics, you just make stuff up or pull it out of your behind.... Kudos to the senator's staffer who found an 8 year old story and make it sound like an "impending threat of dire circumstance!" when it is complete fiction.
None of these proposals "tax"... The two issues are whether sites like Amazon.com should collect sales taxes for out of state sales (like any major catalog company like Sears has been doing for generations), and whether municipalities can tax internet access like they do phone and cable... The original moratorium was designed to encourage greater participation in the Internet. that goal has been accomplished, and further subsidizing it probably makes little sense.
Yes, it sucks.... no one likes paying taxes, but the roads don't get built by themselves, and the cops don't protect your house for free. The money has to come from somewhere.
Thanks,
Mike
Either you oppose taxes or your don't. There's no middle-ground, every tax is irrational. Taxing dividends, gas, the internet, cheese consumption is ethically similar.
If you complain about email/internet taxes but think income tax, wealth tax, consumption taxes or social security are OK, you are just bitching for your own petty particular situation. If you want to be consistent (and ethical), you should reject *any* tax.
This story is just another example that the government will try and tax whatever it can for the purpose of ever increasing its power. Not only does it allow them to 'legally' control the internet, it provides them with the financial mean to do so...
\u262D = \u5350
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.
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2005/07/02/spanish -american-war-tax-on-telephone-service-continues-t oday/
Spanish-American war, actually.
Well folks,we get the government we deserve.
We started out as a Republic that collected tariffs on imports,constitutionally allowed so that the government could run a post office,protect the borders and make sure commerce ran smoothly interstate.
Times changed,corruption took its toll and now we have almost a complete reversal of Constitutional intention that empowers the corrupt.
What can I say? Vote Libertarian and urge others to do the same.It's the closest we can come to fixing the wrongs.
This internet tax bill is a crock of fertilizer as is any taxation on the citizens of the several states and their business.
Throw out the clowns(Republicans and Democrats)and fix it as it is dissapearing faster than the environment and is more urgently valuable.Freedom,use it or lose it.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Really, what's the problem here? I'm in the UK and admittedly, we don't really have the issues with sales tax you guys have (no states, one national rate, called VAT, charged at 17.5%), but it seems quite simple. Options: a) Don't charge sales tax on internet sales, to ease operations. Bit unfair on bricks and mortar retailers, and hardly defensible b) Pay tax in the state in which the goods are deemed to have been sold. Head office, or dispatch point. Its up to you. Add the tax to the price charged, collect from retailer (as for bricks and mortar). Its not like you'd go into a hardware store in Ohio and say "Hey, I'm from Montana, can I not pay the tax please?" c) Pay tax in the state from which the purchase was made As decided by the delivery address, or billing address (again, your choice) Not as fair and one suspects that a store in one state would feel fairly aggrieved about having to pay taxes to another state entirely (though really the tax is on the purchaser, so its actually just admin). With either b) or c), its hardly a complex technological solution. You do only have 50 states. Check one location against a table of 50 states, work out the tax, and make an entry in the appropriate record. NOT HARD. Of course, if you think ALL sales taxes are unfair to start with... well thats a different debate.
'Speak softly and carry a beagle'
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode39/us c_sec_39_00000601----000-.html
(a) A letter may be carried out of the mails* when--
(1) it is enclosed in an envelope;
(2) the amount of postage which would have been charged on the letter if it had been sent by mail is paid by stamps, or postage meter stamps, on the envelope;
(3) the envelope is properly addressed;
(4) the envelope is so sealed that the letter cannot be taken from it without defacing the envelope;
(5) any stamps on the envelope are canceled in ink by the sender; and
(6) the date of the letter, of its transmission or receipt by the carrier is endorsed on the envelope in ink.
*in context, "out of the mails" means any form of delivery other than the US postal service
NONE of these are satisfied by typical emails.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
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!!!
He's against abortion, gays, all the usual stuff.
Not much of a Libertarian at all.
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)
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Ahem:
http://politechbot.com/docs/enzi.sales.tax.bill.0
"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 would appear that the likes of YOU voted these particular imbeciles in:
http://enzi.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseActio
But what if it is to benefit poor children? I can see it already: "Why is idontgno opposing help for the most vulnerable members of our society?!!" Uh-oh...
I say, a locality should be allowed any such idiocy (if its voters want it — via their elected representatives) — if only to prove, it is, in fact, an idiocy.
Municipal Wi-Fi comes to mind.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
If you use the internet to make a purchase from a business that has no prescence in that state, you are exempt from state taxes.
You are not exempt. Many states have a "use tax" which residents are supposed to file for and pay.
FalconShould there be a Law?
http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/quotes.c
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?