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Would You Pay an Internet Broadband Tax?
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the Internet Tax Freedom Act? The whole point was to prevent the government from ever taxing the Internet. But that's the proposal from the FCC — and backed by companies like Google, AT&T and Sprint. Would you pay a buck or two extra for fast access — or vote for someone who thinks you should? 'If members of Congress understood that the FCC is contemplating a broadband tax, they'd sit up and take notice,' said Derek Turner, research director for Free Press, a consumer advocacy group that opposes the tax."
If it means universal service provisions for broadband internet access, then yes.
There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.
Universal service provisions allowed telephone service to reach every single person in the entire country back in the day. The same thing should happen for broadband internet access today.
Only if the money actually went to improving broadband access and speeds in America. The problem is that it just goes to the government coffers and is distributed, mostly, to Social Security.
If the money went to directly improving the system it taxed, then yes. I would love to see a tax that helped pay for a nation-wide fiber-optic system that replaced the aged copper system we rely on.
Unfortunately, it'll only go to lining the FCC board and chairman's pockets with money.
I would gladly pay a small tax for super fast internet access...but the internet has to be free, no filtering, no censorship, no throttling, no blocking torrents ect. Information wants to be free, but there is no free lunch.
REALLY??
But what about all those billions that were given to the telcos to upgrade their infrastructure ???
Whatever happened to "Your subscription fees make up for the ad revenue, so we won't have to have ads every 20 minutes" ??
Aahahahahahhaa 'scuse me while I piss myself laughing at the blatant avarice of it all
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C|N>K
If that meant "we" owned the infrastructure, not the media companies. One requirement would HAVE to be net neutrality.
I would absolutely pay for an internet tax, as long as any service receiving aid from that government tax coffer was forced to provide network neutrality by law.
As it stands, what this is actually earmarked to pay for is probably the "lawful intercept" features that government want to add to everyone's internet.
If paying a small tax will guarantee completely free, uncapped and non-filtered broadband with a certain reasonable speed guarantee, then yes! Otherwise, what's the point?
Don't we pay tax (like state sales tax) on internet and other services already?
(Assuming you live in a state that has sales tax)
Sure, let's all chip in a buck.
Maybe thirty cents goes into "administrative costs" (the inevitable bureaocracy)
Twenty cents, at least, will be sequestered for other failing programs.
Another forty will no doubt be pocketed by recipient telco shareholders and executives.
Perhaps five cents will go for surveys and studies.
Maybe, if we're lucky, a nickel will go toward the intended purpose.
And so it goes.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Physical
Data
Network
Transport
Session
Protocol
Application
Which layer looks like it cares about symmetry?
Weren't the telcos already given a crapload of money to expand broadband access, which they proceeded to piss away? I'm not paying yet another tax, on top of a USF, an FCC surcharge, a tiered-pricing plan, and all of the other ways they already nickle-and-dime us to death. We are already not getting what we're paying for.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt earned a $16.4 Million salary last year.
I fail to see any innovation from my Internet provider.
He got paid 16.4 Million. I doubt he _earned_ that much money for any normal definition of the word.
As we have seen time and again with the Universal Service Fund, big health care (Pfizer being let off the hook for defrauding Medicare because punishing them would mean delisting all of their products from Medicare) and big finance (if you cannot immediately think of five major scandals, you've not been paying attention) the big guys get government money and aren't held accountable at all. At all. So, no. Not a single red cent to them. I don't give a damn how high and noble their stated goals are. Until we have an independent prosecutor who can hang one of these companies from the nearest lamp post for taking the money and not doing precisely what the money is for, the answer is "no."
And if you let your idealism get in the way and say "yes," you're an idiot who deserves to have your face rubbed into this when you get betrayed.
without broadband access DO NOT want high-speed internet
hahahah!!!! thats rich.
They want it. They just do not want to live in a city... You are confusing living like that, with living 50 years ago.
They just do not like cities. They usually do however like modern things. Its worse than that though. There are *many* who want it. But will never get it because of lack of infrastructure. Also what you and I consider high speed, and what that survey considers high speed are 2 different things.
It's called the Universal Access Fund. It's still on your telco bill.
Why would we need yet another tax on our bill just so we can give more money to people that have demonstrated they have absolutely no intention into expanding their offerings.
It's not like the bandwidth is not available. If you have cable, most likely you are already able to get 100/100 Mbps without much of an investment (maybe replace the modem). The fact that you don't have it is because the cable companies don't have any incentive to give you more than 10Mbps because they're the incumbent, they have been granted monopolies in most places and they will rather spend money fighting any competition than giving you more access for free.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
'human rights'? There is no such thing as a 'human right' that is supposed to give you a product. Who is going to pay for this, if 'everybody is getting it for free' exactly?
MY OTHER COMMENTS
No he had it right the first time. Over half the budget goes towards either Social Security or Medicare. The military spending is only ~20% of the total budget and after Obama's cuts kick-in, it will drop even lower.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Yep, as an European, I don't get why I should pay such a tax. I pay for my own broadband connection, and while I agree that everyone should have access to the Internet, it's already available for free at libraries that are funded by my taxes anyway. So I don't get the point of a general "broadband tax".
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm
I've been hearing about this for years but I was under the impression we already paid for 45 Meg up/down under the clinton presidency and while the telco's have been taking tax money for this, they still haven't built out the infrastructure we should have had several years ago.
Anyone know more about this?
It was also my understanding that the National Information Infrastructure was a result of the High Performance computing act of 1991 under Clinton and Gore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_Act_of_1991
So I have to ask. Why pay for more when we've been paying for it since 1991? I'm curious if other's can help me understand if I've misread what the act is supposed to do.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I mean, because obviously we have no sources of funding from our other taxes, so might as well start a new one, right?
Because it's just damn impossible to find funding in the rest of the budget stemming from:
Accounts Receivable Tax, Accumulated Earnings Tax, Alternative Minimum Tax, Aviation Fuel Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Cement and Gypsum Producers License Tax, Cigarette Tax, Coal Severance Tax, Coal Gross Proceeds Tax, Consumer Counsel Tax, Consumption Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Corporation License Tax, Electrical Energy Producers Tax, Estate Tax, Inheritance, Federal Income Tax, Federal Unemployment Tax, Fishing License Tax, Food Service License Tax, Fuel Permit License Tax, Gasoline Tax (8 to 35 cents per gallon), Generation-skipping Transfer Tax, Gift Tax, Gross Production Tax, Hospital Facility Utilization Fee Tax, Hunting License Fee Tax, Inventory Tax, IRS Penalties Tax, Land Value Tax, Liquor License Tax, Liquor Tax, Local Tax, Lodging Facility Use Tax, Luxury Tax, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax,Metal Mines Gross Proceeds Tax, Metal Mines License Tax, Miscellaneous Mineral Mines License Tax, Miscellaneous Mines Net Proceeds Tax, Nursing Facility Bed Tax, Oil and Natural Gas Production Tax, Payroll Tax, Professional PrivilegeTax, Property Tax, Proxy Tax, Public Contractor's Gross Receipts Tax, Public Service Commission Tax, Public Utility Tax, Real Estate Tax, Real Estate Transfer Tax, Rental Vehicle Sales Tax,Resort Tax, Resource Indemnity and Groundwater Assessment Tax, Retail Telecommunications Excise Tax, Sales Tax, School Tax, Self-Employment Tax, Septic Permit Tax, Severance Tax, Social Security Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax, Statewide Emergency Telephone 911 System Fee Tax, Surtax Tax, Tariffs, Telephone Federal Excise Tax, Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, TDD Telecommunications Service Fee Tax, Tobacco Products Tax (Other than Cigarettes), Toll Road Fee Tax, Toll Bridge Fee Tax, Toll Tunnel Fee Tax, Tonnage Tax, Traffic Fines, Trailer Registration Fee Tax, Use Tax, Vehicle Registration and License Tax, Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, Wholesale Energy Transaction Tax, Workers Compensation Tax.
We are taxed to death.
And this is why much of Europe is broke and and the EU is on the verge of breaking up. Of course, we American's are not doing much better. But the point is that our priorities are all out of whack. Everyone seems to want something for nothing. This attitude will not last the test of time.
Life is not for the lazy.
Is that before, or after you account for the fact that SS is taxed on is own. There is no "military tax". SS is taxed seperately, and supposed to be run out of a seperate fund from the federal budget.
Now I know this has become all messed up but...SS tax is still being collected seperately. It shouldn't be counted from the same till just because the trustee broke the trust by borrowing against it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Another Slow Service user here. I did play a numbers game and pick my plan, I have something pretty low, (too lazy to detail it, maybe 1mbit?).
However I carefully considered my internet habits and discovered I can live with 5 seconds of buffering, and overall the $20 or whatever per month saved is worth more to me than having a "better experience". Generally, you can "spend for experience" until you go broke.
Misc Tips: I have a Verizon Dry Loop. That means it's Data Only. No Phone. But who needs a "landline"? $400+ saved per year. (Guess). Meanwhile, I have an AT&T GoPhone, that charges per minute, not per month. Another $700/year saved there. Here's the fun part. Get a VOIP service (I like Magic Jack Plus) and plug it in, and then you have a landline after all! Whee!
So instead of spending cumulative $150+ per month, I think I spend $40 per month tops.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If someone makes an uninformed comment, just dismiss it as uninformed. If someone says something true you find upsetting, you need to examine the root of what they say.
Advice that europeans would be well advised to heed. Instead whenever something about America is brought up, out comes the half-informed snark in droves.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
tl;dr - Why are folks in rural areas entitled to amenities of cities when they don't have the population density to support them?
Because the city slickers think they're entitled to the amenities of rural areas, like, say, food, and transportation across rural areas via roads.
The other part of the argument is unlike medical and museums, you don't have much of an internet without the monopoly granted easements across rural property for buried fiber...
So we'll make a deal... stop eating our food, rip up the roads between the cities, and rip out the buried optical fiber, and you can keep your internet access to yourselves.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You just painted every foreigner with the same broad stroke that a select group of foreigners did to you. Congrats. You are part of the problem, and so are they.
I am European, and I think that fast Internet for free should be available to anyone in EU, as part of basic human rights. I don't care how it is technically done, but this should be long-term goal, especially for social parties, in order to prevent new kind of illiteracy of poor people.
You cannot reasonably claim a Right to be given a service for free. As there is no such thing as anything for free, what you're really demanding is that the government use force of arms to take from one set of people and give to another.
And people wonder why the EU is falling apart financially....
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
No fascism is the union of the state and corporate power. So said Mussolini himself.
The writings of that hack are not interesting to anyone outside his echo chamber.
You don't need a big standing army when you have nukes.
You need a "pretty large army" to guard the nukes if nothing else. Not large compared to current enormous USA standards, but pretty large compared to world standards. The US would need a .mil larger than Ireland's army, or Singapore's army, etc.
The other problem is nukes are useless other than as suicide/MAD devices. Say Canada felt like invading and annexing all northern tier states because we make fun of canadian bacon so much because its a silly name for the product, and our endless lunberjack jokes. It would be bad, but not that awful, other than their Canadian music. Their heath care system and government and maple syrup are better than ours, and Canadian women are hot, so the citizens in the annexed states are certainly not going to fight the annexation very hard, and we've got no army to force the issue... So do we wipe the entire country of US and Canada off the map with the nukes, or just let them have the northern states... Repeat until you're like Constantinople toward the end of the eastern roman empire era, pretty much one fortified city and not much else left.
Inability to provide a graduated response means the only available reactions are going to have to be overly extreme, which is probably a bad thing.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Sounds like you don't know much about socialism. Common and co-operative ownership of the means of production hardly equates to the elite knowing what is best for you.
Foreign deployments are not legitimate. We need the Coast Guard and the army. The nuclear sub fleet and their nuclear deterrent can be transferred to the coast guard, and the army focuses on maintenance of the land based nuclear deterrent, with the air force folded in there as well. Security of shipping lanes can be handled by a renewed merchant marine (ie allow merchant ships to be armed to whatever extent they like).
You don't need a big standing army when you have nukes. With no big armies anywhere, wars of all descriptions become less likely. A small special forces would be enough to deal with non-state threats.
You need a military to absorb the % of the aggressive young male population and kill some of that off, and develop some discipline and maturity in the survivors. (Alligator control is just not big enough to take all of them). Kind a Kipling-esque view and a bit curmudgeonly, but fits the observed facts much better than we need to spend $$$ and $$$$ and $$$$$ for "national defense".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And this is why much of Europe is broke and and the EU is on the verge of breaking up. Of course, we American's are not doing much better. But the point is that our priorities are all out of whack. Everyone seems to want something for nothing. This attitude will not last the test of time.
Funnily enough, that's not it.
The countries in Europe with the most expansive and expensive social welfare programmes are doing relatively well. It's the countries that followed the US financial model more closely (Greece and Ireland especially, and the UK somewhat) with an over-reliance on the financial sector as the next great engine of their economies and a tax system that ensured they were sitting on a bubble that eventually burst.
The countries that are now bailing them out are the ones with the high taxes and extensive welfare state provisions, like Germany, France and (again to a lesser extent, since we fucked up too), the UK.
It's not welfare programmes that bankrupted certain Eurozone countries, it was the financial policies at the other end of the scale - the banks, the toxic loans, the irresponsible tax policy, financial deregulation and the shedding of manufacturing and other things that previously kept the economy going. The welfare state is the reason that we don't have a social underclass who lost everything when the economy crashed and had some support until they were able to get back to work again without losing everything they owned.
You're also mistaken if you think "much of" Europe is broke.
To earn: to be paid in return for services rendered.
The market sets the price. If they hadn't paid him that much he would likely work elsewhere, and they'd hire someone else. They pay him that much cause he and they got together and agreed that he, with his background and knowledge and experience, was worth that much as a CEO.
You may not like how he "earns" his pay or think he does, but that's ok, it's (99.999% likely) not up to you. If the board of directors ever thinks he hasn't earned his pay, then he'd be gone.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Given that we're still paying a tax on our telephones that originated from the Spanish American War, I think we're taxed more than enough right now, thanks.
Plus it appears that fully 50% or more of my tax dollars goes to pork or horseshit that nobody cares about. Well, nobody that isn't a billionaire.
Whether or not it's fascist doesn't matter because it violates the Constitution:
Article I, Section 7:
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Would you Pay to have a sharpened #2 pencil slowly shoved into your eardrum?
I'll pass, but thanks for the "offer".
Please educate yourself on Social Secuity. There is no trust fund. FICA is not partitioned off and put aside for when you get old. All the money goes into the general fund, and then a Treasury account is funded with what the Board thinks will be necessary for the next year.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/the-myth-of-the-social-security-trust-fund/
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'm not fundamentally opposed to paying a broadband tax, but what would I get for it? I would happily pay a 5% tax if it meant that my broadband received government-imposed price controls, minimum bandwidth guarantees, and net neutrality.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
I thought Internet access was already "taxed" in the form of ad banners and being spied upon by various government and corporate entities.
Also, that people already pay for more faster access and higher bandwidth caps.
The parent has the truth well in hand. Rural US is not what you think it is. This is not about shoe-less waifs huddled in plywood cabins. The sort of rural households that might benefit from 'universal internet' are typically well off.
Besides, this 'problem' is easily solved without a tax. Just open the right-of-way to competitors and then jump back and let the dirt fly as phone/cable companies suddenly discover new enthusiasm for complete coverage.
That solution does nothing to feed the statists, however. No opportunity to collect billions and then haggle over which politically favored constituency gets to play with it.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Yep. And in this case the bill you're looking for was passed in 1994: Pub. L. No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56 (1996) codified at 47 U.S.C. 254(d).
Every telecommunications carrier that provides interstate telecommunications services shall contribute, on an equitable and nondiscriminatory basis, to the specific, predictable, and sufficient mechanisms established by the Commission to preserve and advance universal service. The Commission may exempt a carrier or class of carriers from this requirement if the carrier's telecommunications activities are limited to such an extent that the level of such carrier's contribution to the preservation and advancement of universal service would be de minimis. Any other provider of interstate telecommunications may be required to contribute to the preservation and advancement of universal service if the public interest so requires.
caritj.org