Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Should the US Government Tax Email?
Contramac writes "I've been hearing lately that the government wants to place a tax on outgoing email because more people are writing email than postal mail. Should this or other taxes on the Internet take place? Should the Internet community enter politics and make a stand of how they feel? I'm sure there is or have been some legislature about this topic somewhere. Myself and maybe other people out there want to find out what others opinions about this matter are. What is yours? " This is something we are going to have to face sooner or later, but I don't see how the US Government can justify it. A large portion of this infrastructure is based on commercial resources, not governmental ones.
ObTopic:
This makes no sense at all. While (I think) the post office may be running a slight surplus at the moment, it has not been a substantial source of government revenue in this century. In any event, the cost of delivering first class letters sent by ordinary joes/janes is substantially subsidized by bulk rate mail, so to the extent people send e-mail instead of first class postal mail, the government is actually farther ahead by a few pennies.Suggested substitute topic: In order to make Area 51 even more secret, the government is considering deleting the number 51 from the official list of positive integers. Discuss among yourselves.
I wish I could be that naive.
The other reason may be "We want to track all this email". This would be a great way to keep tabs on things. It would also be a way to shut down operations that wish to hide their doings from the government (not necessarily criminals...I can think of many legitimate reasons to hide certain details from the government). If you avoided notifying the Fed of your emailing, the IRS can get you, a la Al Capone.
BTW, is this not a direct assault on the first amendment? Free speech requires "free beer". If the government has the power to tax email, it has the power to tax it heavily--that is, to suppress it.
You can tax commerce, so you can tax commercial communications ventures (telcos, ISPs, cable providers) for their commercial activities. You can tax and regulate the electromagnetic spectrum as a "previously undiscovered resource", and the only way to keep the spectrum from becoming pure noise. Finally, you can tax postal service (with stamps) because the government is actually providing a service.
Taxing email (or other TCP-style traffic) is entirely out of line. It will also be very hard to do; if a protocol is taxed, another protocol will pop up. Programmers can release software faster than Congress can regulate it. Most ISPs are already taxed on a per-dollar, rather than per-megabyte, basis by virtue of being commercial entities.
I can understand why the government wants to tax the Internet. It's for the same reason bank robbers rob banks: it's where the money is. The Internet is full of the more wealthy people and businesses in the US; if you are going to levy a tax in this country, you may as well tax the wealthier people. I for one have no problem with taxing the Net in principle, but I do have a problem with the email idea. Perhaps a saner, more fair, and less invasive tax would be an e-commerce sales tax.
Before people flame me for saying the above to get "other people" taxed, understand that I am a software engineer (to give you an idea of my tax bracket) in the e-commerce business. If my ideas get implemented, I will pay more tax than I do now. I don't overly mind paying taxes, and I know that being taxed in some form or other is a necessity. I do mind when the tax codes invade my freedom and violate my rights, especially when the same tax revenues could be gained in a less invasive way.
--The basis of all love is respect
I do not support the taxing of email . . . just wanted to get that out of the way.
Onto my real point. How would they do that? Would ISPs be required to log all of the email messages that people send? This alone would be a huge task to put to ISPs that would cost them money. Second would be the issue of logging such emails from the standpoint of privacy.
How would the taxes be collected? Would it be added on to the bill you pay your ISP, would it be put on your W2? What if your ISP was not your email provider (free email abounds)?
Needless to say, I think that it would cost twice as much to manage the thing as it would gain in revenue.
The other question that comes to mind is what about all of us who run Linux and Sendmail? I run my own sendmail and IMAP server on a dedicated connection. I am about to give a couple of friends account because they are moving. Would I be required to log the number of email that left my box (something I really don't know how or want to do), and then collect the money from them and me (something that I WON'T do).
This is a really bad idea IMHO. If someone would explain the logistics behind such a proposal, at least it could be debatable from an ethical/political standpoint as to whether or not it would be beneficial, but without any such logistics worked out, it's nothing . . .
Stamps.com and estamp.com were approved for liceenses to create postage stamp on the 9th of August. Cnn reported the news today and I went to look at the sites and the software/service for sale. Briefly if you haven't heard of it, it allows you to print up your own postage for snail mail. To use this system to print your own stamps requires that you download a license from the USPS. There was no mention of any operating systems besides those sold by Microsoft as eligible to run this software. Not Linux, not Mac, not Solaris, not OS/2, nor anyone else. I would have thought some lawyer at the USPS would have raised the alarm about the exclusivity of this deal as it denies equality of access to government services.
The irony of the government licensed monopoly being allowed to do an exclusive deal on an essential service like postage with a ('til now?) purely private monopoly, while the government's lawyers waiting for a verdict in their case against MS was apparently all lost on CNN and the USPS. It made me sick in that old familiar way.
Looks like USPS will save itself some money by using Linux to deliver the mail, but cheerfully helps enforce the MS tax on all small business owners. Nice.
The USPS has neither the resources nor the jurisdiction to do this; it's just another in a long string of chain e-mails that morons forward around without knowing anything about it.
In general, Internet taxes won't work. There are only two real models that could work: charge the ISPs a tax, which they would pass on to subscribers (I imagine AOL and others would fight this tooth and nail), or a national sales tax on purchases made over the Internet. Taxing things such as e-mail or bandwidth would be impractical.
That won't stop legislators from trying, though...