The Senate has approved a seven-year extension of the Internet tax ban and has adjusted the moratorium’s language to protect online services such as e-mail from taxation.
The Senate voice vote comes one week after the House passed a bill calling for a four-year moratorium. The ban, which prevents state and local authorities from taxing Internet access and related services, was first approved in 1998, and was set to expire Nov. 1.
Tax ban proponents had been seeking a permanent ban, but most had conceded that four years was the best-case scenario. The seven-year ban approved by the Senate came as an 11th-hour surprise, according to those familiar with the issue.
In recent days, technology experts had become increasingly concerned not only about the tax ban’s expiration, but about new language in the House version that would have exposed common online services such as e-mail to taxation by state and local governments.
According to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, changes to the language in the tax ban approved by the House exposed many online services to local taxation.
“When people say it’s not about the money, it’s ALL about the money.” Truer words were never spoken!
At least we have – hopefully – seven years of grace, BZ. I think I could do without the internet if they tax it. We can’t even paint our barn roof without our property taxes being raised. It gets more ridiculous every day!
Sooner or later they will try it.
Sooner or later the donks will also try to censor it.
The net is the left’s worst enemy (excluding itself.)
Look no further than NY State where there is a tax on internet access as ‘entertainment’. That was the case a few years back, when access fees were taxed by the State to raise revenue. Knowing NY, it is *still* there.
The States hate the revenue lost on sales tax and realize that going to each individual to collect it will end them up on the short end of the stick. NY tries to do that by an ‘entertainment’ tax… mind you I have problems thinking of any other ‘entertainment’ that is taxed in NY.
There may come a day, in the not too distant future, when every sale that is made is transacted off-shore so as to avoid local taxes. In theory that is already possible… and trying to tax *that* becomes a sheer headache. The digital world changes how we view the rest of the world, and some of our cherished notions on transaction ‘fees’, like sales taxes, will have to bite the dust.
Not that politicians won’t *try*, mind you… but they already have problems with even the most minor of concepts about the ‘net and what ‘local standards’ are. Believe me, German and Italian ‘local standards’ are not those of the US… ditto Thailand, South Korea, and India… I believe the ‘net would approach attempts to ‘tax’ transactions by the usual methods of open-source software, distributed routers, and putting a few dedicated machines up to thwart tracking. That is already going on, and if you try to force people to pay taxes, you will see more and more dedicated, small computers to doing those things.
Next up will be buggy whip taxes, mark my word on that!
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A Newt One: dude, you obviously didn’t look at my sideroll. So go away.
AJ: off-shore? That’s easy: simply TAX your method of ACCESS to the internet; let’s say you get your internet via the Giant Conglomerate Cable System (GCCS). The Fed would mandate a certain percentile of tax be included on your monthly bill to cover the things you could POTENTIALLY purchase on the internet, whether or not you purchased anything that month.
If I can think of that, so can the Fed.
BZ
LMAO, BZ kicked a moonbat to the curb… That is just too funny…