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Taxes On Cell Phones Hit All-Time High
adeelarshad82 writes "As a breakdown of the top ten states with the highest and lowest taxes shows, the wireless consumers in Nebraska, Washington, and New York pay more than 20 percent of their wireless bills in taxes and fees, mostly due to the proliferation of archaic or duplicated surcharges. Experts from KSE Partners spent five years monitoring the federal, state, and local taxes imposed on wireless consumers. According to their analysis, wireless taxes grew three times faster than the retail sales rate between 2007 and 2010. The reason behind this is that legislators and Congressmen are targeting the wireless industry for tax money to relieve the burden from more recession-starved industries. In fact, a few states even tax wireless consumers for non wireless-related projects; for instance, Utah funds its poison-control centers with a poison-control surcharge found on wireless bills, and in 2009 Wisconsin imposed a police and fire protection fee to subsidize local departments."
So you use a wider tax base to pay for them.
Absolutely. Since these resources are available to or able to be used by everyone, then use the widest tax base possible - raise taxes for everyone. If you can't pay for the poison control in your state, then your state needs to raise more taxes; state legislatures shouldn't be abusing growing industries just because they're terrified to say "higher taxes" instead of "wireless surcharge." It's either that or actually manage the state budget more responsibly.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Why should taxes only apply to the item/product/service being taxed? Why shouldn't a tax on gasoline go to research into the electric grid, for example? Why shouldn't a tax on luxury yachts go toward education?
I understand that there's a certain clarity when a tax on cigarettes goes toward providing research into lung cancer, but revenue is revenue. We've got municipalities and counties and states that are experiencing severe revenue shortfalls because of the economy. That money has to come from somewhere.
I'm not saying I like the wireless taxes being piled on because it's easier than closing tax loopholes for investment bankers, but the notion that all tax money has to go directly to an expenditure directly related to the tax itself seems simplistic.
Remember, the reason our tax code is tens of thousands of pages is not because it contains so many different taxes, but because it contains so many tax loopholes for special interest groups. Years ago I used to work for CCH, the company that publishes the tax code (like Westlaw, except just for tax law) and worked on tax preparation and compliance software (I wrote the manuals - I am not a programmer). Like most people, I thought all those huge books were full of ways for the government to collect money. Instead, I learned, they're full of ways that certain people can avoid having to pay taxes. It follows that the reason we can never get tax simplification laws passed is because rich and powerful fuckers don't want to have to pay their way.
As we learned in the 90's, the best way to get out of deficit spending and huge public debt is to have a good economy and lots of people working and making money. Cut the deficit from the supply side by increasing revenue. Then, when times are good, that's the time to look for ways to cut costs and make things more efficient (and more fair!). Cutting public spending when people are already suffering is just going to make it all worse. Look at how all the budget cutting is failing in Europe. When you've got a bunch of people who have been out of work and probably will never have another job because nobody is going to hire someone who's 60 years old and unemployed, the last thing you want to do is raise the retirement age so that now you not only have an unemployed old person, but you've got an unemployed old person who's going to have to eat cat food for an extra five years before they can collect Social Security. Since corporations that are showing record profits seem determined to continue to lay off workers, that's not really a good time for the social safety net to be cut back.
Maybe we can ask all those patriotic Americans at the upper end of the economic spectrum who have done so well over the past couple of decades to help out. Society has done a lot for them, maybe it's time to ask them to do a little bit for society besides expect a 25% annual return on their capital.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Or politicians are money grubbing thieves and hope people wont notice a 20% tax because it's stuffed int their phone bill. But your theory could be correct to.
Nonsense. Taxation is paying dues to have civilization.
There is no such thing as an American that made it on their own "hard work and innovation". If someone claims that they did, I suggest dropping them in Somalia and seeing how well they do where there is no "big government".
You are welcome on my lawn.