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US Internet Tax Committee Squabbles

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the show-me-the-money dept.

There's increasing reports coming about the state of US Government's Internet Tax Committee. The committee, which stopped meeting about six months because of squabbling is back talking again about a way to acheive "tax-neutrality", meaning that all those nice tax free sales may be gone in the next few years.

3 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Internet Taxation. by Signal+11 · · Score: 3

    There's two things the government hasn't figured out, apparently. Let me summarize for them then:

    1. Tracking things on the internet can be a pain in the arse. Just ask the NSA - even echelon can't keep up (and that's only searching for *very* specific things).

    2. The US cannot dictate international law. The internet is a *global communications network*. Almost a billion people world-wide have access to it. Unless you can convince every country that uses the internet to follow your law, you're leaving a gaping-huge-i-can-drive-a-mac-truck-through-this hole in any legislation on the subject.

    3. Two words: Tax Evasion.

    4.

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  2. What are the taxes FOR? by K-Man · · Score: 3

    So far no one on this panel has given any justification for why these taxes are needed, or what they will be used for.

    Here's a breakdown of what taxes are used for currently in the US:

    Sales taxes - supplying motorists with roads, parking lots, and ambulance service so they can get to The Mall.

    Property taxes - supplying homeowners with police and fire protection, so no one will steal the cars that people need to get to The Mall.

    Income taxes - paying for a huge army to keep gas cheap so people can get to The Mall

    Internet taxes - ?

    As far as I can tell from reading articles on this panel, the main impetus seems to be to raise taxes so that internet shopping will not be cheaper than going to The Mall.

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    ---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
  3. Re:It really needs a tax by Fizgig · · Score: 3

    Well, it's not as if UPS doesn't use Federal interstates and air traffic control systems and fossil fuels made cheap by the US military and buy.com doesn't use big chunks of Internet funded by the government. The main advantage is that you could lower taxes on other things (not that this would necessarily happen). Sales taxes also promote economic growth better than income taxes (at the expense of being more "unfair"; they're progressive), so maybe they could have more of one and less of the other to reach a nicer balance.

    So many Libertarians on Slashdot! (you are a libertarian, right?) Sometimes they tax things just so that they can increase the big-pile-of-money-that-disappears-every-year.