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Internet Tax Imminent?
jhigh writes "Proposals to tax the Internet are gaining steam as state legislators see a giant pot of money just waiting to be dipped into. "At the moment, states and municipalities are frequently barred by federal law from collecting both access and sales taxes. But they're hoping that their new lobbying effort, coordinated by groups including the National Governors Association, will pay off by permitting them to collect billions of dollars in new revenue by next year.""
Now where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, here! And it's even a link to the exact same article...
This guy's the limit!
I already pay PST/GST on my net connection, and I pay taxes [or duties] on packages bought online. They want to tax on top of the tax I already pay?
How the hell do you tax email? What if you run your own server?
Step 1. Understand technology
Step 2. Legislate it
Step 3. Represent your constituents.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I pay for access. My ISP pays taxes on their revenue. Does that not count?
My ISP pays the owner of lines they lease. The line owner pays taxes on their revenue. Does that not count?
My ISP pays other ISP's in access agreements. They all pay taxes. Does that not count?
The service providers make revenue. They pay taxes on the revenue. Does that not count?
On top of the services there are advertisers. They make revenues and pay taxes. Does that not count?
It seems to me the whole system is already covered.
When is the tea party?
Let's get businesses off of the Internet, and take it back to what it's supposed to be:
A global pornography repository.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Question: Why are brick and motar stores better? it's less efficient to browse a huge store than to use the net and order from a warehouse. Why can't you have local stores run shops on the web?
I think given the choice of ordering from Ottawa, and ordering from Hong Kong, I'd rather order from Ottawa given the selection, price, and reputation are up to it. I doubt I'm alone in this thought process.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If they're taxing the tubes, does any commerce that goes through them get marked up, thus hiking prices for the consumer? I mean, fantastic, well done Uncle Sam - you've discovered a new and massive source of revenue, which incidentally buggers a large and growing element in your economy! Way to combat the national debt and fight the next dotcom bubble-burst.
And, more importantly, I'd like to know how this affects other countries. How many key internet services are run from or through the US? ICANN, DNS etc... all this and net-neutrality too. Why does the world seem slightly more fucked up every time you get up in the morning?
Sorry, I'm done. You can mod me down now.
Meta will eat itself
This is VERY good news. Just the other day I was complaining to my friends how I don't pay enough in taxes. I mean Federal, state, FICA, Medicare, sales tax, gas tax, car tax at purchase, car excise tax every year, property tax, car renewal tax every year, car inspection tax every year, tax on cell phone service, tax on cable service, tax on internet service, tax on food, etc. etc. This is not enough! I must be taxed more!
33% of every work week is worked just to pay the big 3 in taxes. I wonder what it is when you factor in all the above (and anything I missed). At some point something as got to give.
I come from North Carolina. We invented NASCAR raceing because we got bored from bootlegging. Outwitting revenuers has been a sport here for a century. If we get not just a sales tax on the connection, but a "connection tax," will my open AP "WardriversWelcome" become a bootlegging operation?
The government, here and elsewhere, has shown a great willingness to try and control access to and content on the internet. However, direct control will equal censorship, and will always be declared unconstitutional. But if the internet can be licensed and taxed, the states can effectively control who can get connections. Imagine taxing internet connections at the same level as alcohol, somewhere between 25-62% in NC. Just imagine how many people that could price out of the market, and how onerous the effect would be on the rest of us. Imagine a bandwith tax sold to curtail piracy, but effectively cutting off Linux distributions.
Maybe bootlegging will come back into fashion again. Instead of stills we'll have WAPs, but we'll still have the revenuers with the machine guns, dynamite, and axes.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
This is a state tax. Outside of some minor exceptions, state-derived revenue has negligible impact on military funding. That's all Federal. Even National Guard units that are the last vestiges of independent state militias are Federally funded.
Besides which, talking about military funding as a tax problem is a red herring. It's not an issue of insufficient revenue, it's a question of misplaced priorities. There's more than enough money to buy body armor, or up-armored vehicles, or whatever, for the military, in the budget, if people in Congress wanted to do it. They've just spent that money elsewhere, and decided not to pay for body armor. Giving them more money won't necessarily change that; I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't just keep doing that. If they've already shown that equipping our soldiers is a low priority, a few extra billion here and there isn't going to change that. They're going to squander it the same way they squander all the money they have now.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Whenever this subject comes up I always marvel at the stupidity of suggesting a tax on e-mail. Not only is it unjustifiable, it's unenforceable.
E-mail removes revenue from the post office, but who cares? The USPS can hire fewer mail carriers as their volume decreases. E-mail runs mostly (if not entirely) over private infrastructure. There is no justification for an e-mail tax, because the government is not providing any significant e-mail related services. Even if you like the idea of Internet access taxes and Internet sales taxes, a tax on e-mail is simply unjust.
And how would we implement an e-mail tax? Even if we decided that it made sense for some reason - if we thought it would make spam uneconomical, for example - it's all over private infrastructure. How could we force SMTP servers to fairly account for the number of SMTP transactions they perform? E-mail server providers like Microsoft and Novell can be forced to build immutable, proprietary reporting into Exchange and Groupwise and other products, but the most common SMTP server is open source. If you are charged a cent per 100 messages you could easily recompile the SMTP daemon to be more generous. And what's to stop people from setting up new servers for unlimited e-mail? A tax on e-mail is unenforceable. I'd be surprised anyone is talking about it, if I didn't know as much about Congress as I do.
Good. The sooner, the better. I can't wait to see the consumer-whores freak out over not being able to dodge sales tax at the expense of their local communities! Bring back local businesses. Make Net businesses compete on the same level as their brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Thank you, my luddite friend.
Internet retailers are more efficient and usually pay their employees more than local businesses. They require fewer employees and serve more customers.
The thing is: The middleman shouldn't exist in the first place, if you think about it. The internet has middlemen competing and makes their role in the process less and less prevalent.
I used to work for one. I made 20% more than the average best buy employee starting, and I had nothing more than a high school diploma. I worked my way up to supervisor and could have even had health benefits if I had actually been full time. The place I worked for, in spite of all this, pays its employees less than most warehouses.
This new tax will help some local businesses. However, for the most part, the internet will continue to replace these businesses even on a 'level playing field'.
And on a slightly less related note: Is anyone else annoyed that the government pursues any possible source of revenue? People do not want to pay taxes, and the government makes more than enough money to do everything it should be doing. The solution to the budgetary crises across the US should be obvious: Cut spending. I guess it's a lot harder to shrink government than to steal more money from the people. Sales taxes are especially bad because they disproportionately tax the poor (poor pay a higher % of their income to a sales tax than others do).
Latewire
Problem is, what if you can't afford it but need it? What about legal protection, from police to courts? Should you only be allowed to get a fair trial or be able to defend your rights in court if you can afford it? Should a policeman first of all check your liquidity before keeping the robber from mugging you? What about emergency healthcare? Should you die if you can't pay the bill?
I'm not really in favor of "have the state provide for everything", but there are a few essential key liabilities that a state is here for.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Communism is all about having an all-powerful government...
No, it isn't. That would be Socialism. In theory, Socialism gives way to Communism; i.e., where the means of production are owned and controlled collectively. A government is supposed to be unnecessary.
All those Soviet, Chinese, Cuban, etc Communist parties you hear about aren't actually practicing Communism. Pretty much in the same way the US doesn't actually practice Laissez-Faire Capitalism.
Well, for one thing, there are the ethical implications of not doing so. Believe it or not, there are people in our society who cannot take care of themselves through no fault of their own. Why should we allow people to needlessly suffer and die when we have it within our means to not?
For another, ethical concerns aside, we as a society have a vested interest in making sure that our population is a healthy and productive one. If some members of it aren't, we should do what we can—for the sake of ourselves, if for no other reason, since we also benefit from their future productivity—to ensure that they have a chance to become so again.
Now, I know what you're thinking, that everyone on welfare and other government programs are leeches sucking off the teat of our hard-earned pay. And yes, there are a few people out there like that. But as weird as it may seem, the vast majority of people on government programs don't want to be. They'd love to be in the middle class, or even wealthy.
The problem is that most of these people either 1) don't know how to do so, or 2) have gotten so depressed with a society that systematically prevents them from making more of themselves because everyone is so damned greedy that they figure it's not worth their time and effort. They figure that they'll just end up right where they are now, just shorter of breath and one day closer to death. What's sad is that we as a country used to not be so much this way, but that these people are for the most part correct now.
Do I think that government is doing a spectacular job of helping people to help themselves? No, because it's become rather corrupt with greedy bastards who don't really care about you or me and just want to enjoy the lavish lifestyle of a Congressman. But do I think that one of the reasons government exists is to provide for the general welfare of society by doing things like providing assistance to those who need it? Yes, I most wholeheartedly do.