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FCC Panel Wants To Tax Internet-Using Businesses, Give the Money To ISPs (arstechnica.com)
The FCC's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), which includes members like AT&T, Comcast, Google Fiber, Sprint, and other ISPs and industry representatives, is proposing a tax on websites to pay for rural broadband. Ars Technica reports: If adopted by states, the recommended tax would apply to subscription-based retail services that require Internet access, such as Netflix, and to advertising-supported services that use the Internet, such as Google and Facebook. The tax would also apply to any small- or medium-sized business that charges subscription fees for online services or uses online advertising. The tax would also apply to any provider of broadband access, such as cable or wireless operators. The collected money would go into state rural broadband deployment funds that would help bring faster Internet access to sparsely populated areas. Similar universal service fees are already assessed on landline phone service and mobile phone service nationwide. Those phone fees contribute to federal programs such as the FCC's Connect America Fund, which pays AT&T and other carriers to deploy broadband in rural areas.
The BDAC tax proposal is part of a "State Model Code for Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment and Investment." Once finalized by the BDAC, each state would have the option of adopting the code. An AT&T executive who is on the FCC advisory committee argued that the recommended tax should apply even more broadly, to any business that benefits financially from broadband access in any way. The committee ultimately adopted a slightly more narrow recommendation that would apply the tax to subscription services and advertising-supported services only. The BDAC model code doesn't need approval from FCC commissioners -- "it is adopted by the BDAC as a model code for the states to use, at their discretion," Ajit Pai's spokesperson told Ars. As for how big the proposed taxes would be, the model code says that states "shall determine the appropriate State Universal Service assessment methodology and rate consistent with federal law and FCC policy."
The BDAC tax proposal is part of a "State Model Code for Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment and Investment." Once finalized by the BDAC, each state would have the option of adopting the code. An AT&T executive who is on the FCC advisory committee argued that the recommended tax should apply even more broadly, to any business that benefits financially from broadband access in any way. The committee ultimately adopted a slightly more narrow recommendation that would apply the tax to subscription services and advertising-supported services only. The BDAC model code doesn't need approval from FCC commissioners -- "it is adopted by the BDAC as a model code for the states to use, at their discretion," Ajit Pai's spokesperson told Ars. As for how big the proposed taxes would be, the model code says that states "shall determine the appropriate State Universal Service assessment methodology and rate consistent with federal law and FCC policy."
We're letting *AT&T, Comcast, Google Fiber, Sprint, and other ISPs and industry representatives* write our tax code. I guess it's better than letting Enron, Exxon, and DuPont write them... Oh wait, they probably do
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Because you haven't given ISPs enough ways to screw the consumer and make money already? Unbelievable.
who tend to vote for them. Not that I mind rural communities getting the Internet, but not like this. Make it municipal broad bank. A country just did it for about $5 bucks a month. Verizon got billions of my money to build out rural fiber, kept the money and never did the work.
No more. Fund municipal broadband out of the General fund or tell the fuckers to fuck off. All this does is charge me $5 bucks a month (I pay for business class at home) for free money in AT&Ts hands.
Once again, we've got an election in 2 years. Show up at your primary and vote the fuckers out. Then show up at the general and put some real pro-consumer folks in. We had plenty of them in the primary in 2018 but so few showed up for the primary that most of these yahoo incumbents survived. Again, no more. Primary them and then vote in pro-worker and pro-consumer reps who refuse corporate PAC money.
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Since "Internet-using" companies already pay their ISPs for access and bandwidth, like everyone else does, perhaps the ISPs could take some their -- what do you call them, ah, yes -- enormous profits and use them to build rural infrastructure all on their own. Sure, perhaps the ROI / profits from that won't be enough to list under the "Rape and Pillage" section of the quarterly reports, but maybe people will hate ISPs a little less -- except, obviously, for Comcast. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...we sue AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon for the $400 billion of public funding they already received for rural broadband and just pocketed and we can use that to provide rural broadband?
it's like giving the gas tax to private toll roads and no they will not be made into free roads.
You're already paying the fuckers! CenturyLink is being paid $500 MILLION in tax money yearly for rural broadband expansion and they're only using it to cover areas that someone else covers already so they can stifle competition, completely ignoring unserved areas. The rationale behind municipal broadband bans is that it's unfair to compete with the government because they have tax authority, yet they gladly take tax money and use it to be anti-competitive. NO MORE TAX MONEY TO BIG ISPs!
They can't tax Internet use. It's literally against the law.
But don't let that stand in the way of FCC announcing to the country how totally, utterly and completely corrupt they are.
Not in the US, but guessing this is a similar tax setup.
But as an employer I absolutely hate hate hate hate Payroll tax. It's technically not that much, and pales into insignificance compared to others. But I find something truly obnoxious about paying a tax to employ someone.
...in infrastructure projects like this one, right?
Well, you got net neutrality overturned. So go invest in that infrastructure now... Oh wait, you don't want to pay for it now. What's your lame-ass excuse now?
You lying, greedy, ******* bastards.
Europe has universal healthcare, national daycare, welfare etc. Capitalism and Socialism are like fire: A little bit keeps you warm, a lot kills you.
They're not going to get squat, but the GOP will get a photo op where they tell them they're gonna get Internet and the propaganda news outlets they watch will trumpet that. Then when the Internet never materializes they'll blame it on tax and spend liberals' job killing regulations.
Keep in mind I'm not necessarily blaming the Rural folks for falling for this crap. The big reason I want them to have internet is so they can stop watching cable and over air TV and get out of the propaganda bubble their in. I think it would be great for the country as a whole. Those communities have massive hospital shortages and problems with clean drinking water. The American left (think the Bernie wing of the Democratic party) wants to solve those problems, but they keep losing elections to rural voters (who, thanks to the Senate, Electoral college and gerrymandering have about 40x the voting power of a city voter) keep shooting down attempts to help them.
If we could somehow get the message to them about how much the GOP is screwing them over we could fix just about everything.
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There is also nothing at all that guarantees they'll actually DO the build-out, much less do it in rural areas that are unserved. Major carriers get literal billions from the government solely to build out service in unserved areas and they don't do it. Rather, they don't serve an area, a small competitor ISP starts dropping fiber in the ground in that area, and LIKE MAGIC, the big ISP that gets billions in tax dollars to build out to unserved areas has the funds and desire to build out to that area that's about to be served by the small competitor. But the ten houses two miles down the road and 2000 feet down a gravel driveway? Fuck 'em, the hillbillies, they don't get our tax-funded build-out that the government intended to be for them! These rural build-out agreements with telecoms clearly hold no teeth. The government is literally paying tax money to huge companies to keep small companies from competing with them.
...and the donkey he rode in on! Hopefully he'll be an add-on to the Trump impeachment proceedings.
I still run a small(tiny me) business 30+ years. I did outside contractor work for 3M corp for over a decade. And I was required to pay for a Workers Comp. Ins. Policy the whole time. Because the state of MN required 3M to furnish the Workers Comp. policy number to them for all their vendors. Every year the state of MN would contact me and ask why I have a workers comp policy but all my reports have 0 payroll. And I explain and they would go huh, interesting.
;)
Everything government does has a cost and no one in government has a clue about the real world.
Just my 2 cents
For those who do not know, the owner of a business can not make a claim on the business workers comp policy. i was required by the government(over sight and regulations) to buy Insurance I could never make a claim on.
More like a punish the poor and middle class tax really. Fuel taxes hurt the poorest of us the most. Had he only passed a tax that went after people making over 100k Euros and I'm sure you would hear almost nothing about it. Certainly not rioting.
The rich people will just find ways to avoid paying the tax, or move elsewhere.
Taxes mostly hurt and poor and middle classes.
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Actually, if you didn't have your own Worker's Comp policy as a subcontractor for 3M, then the insurance company covering 3M for Worker's Comp would have billed 3M for your coverage. Worker's Comp premiums are based off of payroll and it's an accounting exercise to correlate payments to subcontractors with their WC policy numbers to then deduct those amounts from their own payroll totals that are used to calculate the WC premiums for 3M. This was not the state of MN demanding 3M furnish all their subcontractors' WC policy numbers. This was 3M leveraging the subcontractor relationship to reduce their operating expenses as much as possible.
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