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Internet Tax Imminent?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jun 04, 2007 09:05 AM
from the everybody-freak-out-like-the-last-fifty-times dept.
from the everybody-freak-out-like-the-last-fifty-times dept.
jhigh writes "Proposals to tax the Internet are gaining steam as state legislators see a giant pot of money just waiting to be dipped into. "At the moment, states and municipalities are frequently barred by federal law from collecting both access and sales taxes. But they're hoping that their new lobbying effort, coordinated by groups including the National Governors Association, will pay off by permitting them to collect billions of dollars in new revenue by next year.""
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Where have I seen this before? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where have I seen this before? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where have I seen this before? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, I think that an internet tax is a pretty stupid idea; it'll make municipal wifi harder to do because the taxes would have to be added to the general burden, which people wouldn't like
Re:Where have I seen this before? (Score:5, Insightful)
Same great article, now less filling!
But seriously, we can laugh now, but I wouldn't put this past our government. They've passed worse (DMCA anyone?) The Internet needs to be kept free and international - belonging to no single nation. And that means no nation should be able to tax it.
Re:Where have I seen this before? (Score:4, Funny)
Say what? (Score:5, Interesting)
How the hell do you tax email? What if you run your own server?
Step 1. Understand technology
Step 2. Legislate it
Step 3. Represent your constituents.
Tom
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Funny)
Reagan, Remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business, August 15, 1986
Re: (Score:3)
I never understand people who complain about banking fees. What is everyone doing using the ATMs so much anyway? Take out a couple of hundred bucks (or whatever) and hide that at home. Tap into it when you need it and there's y
Taxes are already everywhere. Why more? (Score:5, Insightful)
My ISP pays the owner of lines they lease. The line owner pays taxes on their revenue. Does that not count?
My ISP pays other ISP's in access agreements. They all pay taxes. Does that not count?
The service providers make revenue. They pay taxes on the revenue. Does that not count?
On top of the services there are advertisers. They make revenues and pay taxes. Does that not count?
It seems to me the whole system is already covered.
When is the tea party?
Good! (Score:4, Funny)
A global pornography repository.
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're taxing the tubes, does any commerce that goes through them get marked up, thus hiking prices for the consumer? I mean, fantastic, well done Uncle Sam - you've discovered a new and massive source of revenue, which incidentally buggers a large and growing element in your economy! Way to combat the national debt and fight the next dotcom bubble-burst.
And, more importantly, I'd like to know how this affects other countries. How many key internet services are run from or through the US? ICANN, DNS etc... all this and net-neutrality too. Why does the world seem slightly more fucked up every time you get up in the morning?
Sorry, I'm done. You can mod me down now.
YES! (Score:5, Insightful)
33% of every work week is worked just to pay the big 3 in taxes. I wonder what it is when you factor in all the above (and anything I missed). At some point something as got to give.
Hooray for sales tax (Score:3, Insightful)
ooh, this is a favourite (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that will help... almost nobody. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of crazy implications here by taxing online sales.
Watch the pendulum swing back toward brick-and-mortar stores. Previously I would go to the showroom or store to physically see/touch/learn about a product, then go back home and order it online (because it would invariably be cheaper). Taxing the product online makes me less inclined to take that additional step if I decide to make the purchase. YMMV.
This is going to hurt the online-only shops, as the taxes will dip into profits. Some small shops (and startups) are only in business because a physical shop (either buying, building or leasing) was simply not feasible, and taxation is not going to help.
How is this going to work if the collecting of funds and the supply-chain fulfillment happens outside of the taxing authority's jurisdiction? If I'm a US business setting up shop in the Bahamas and decide to sell goods made and warehoused in China, and drop-shipping from there back to US customers, what authority would anyone on US soil have to force me to pony up the taxes back to the States? (BTW, I'm just asking... I don't own or operate any business as of this writing.)
How would any government (State and/or Federal) plan to enforce any legislation it plans, with regard to online taxation? Seems I may not have a lot to worry about, given it's track record in reducing and regulating spam. (I don't know about you all, but last week's arrest of Robert Soloway didn't do much to unclog any of my Inboxes).
If successful, all this may do is make the small shops run away. Who will this help, anyway?
Did anyone think about the implications beyond "oooohhh... free money!"...?!
Will we get revenuers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I come from North Carolina. We invented NASCAR raceing because we got bored from bootlegging. Outwitting revenuers has been a sport here for a century. If we get not just a sales tax on the connection, but a "connection tax," will my open AP "WardriversWelcome" become a bootlegging operation?
The government, here and elsewhere, has shown a great willingness to try and control access to and content on the internet. However, direct control will equal censorship, and will always be declared unconstitutional. But if the internet can be licensed and taxed, the states can effectively control who can get connections. Imagine taxing internet connections at the same level as alcohol, somewhere between 25-62% in NC. Just imagine how many people that could price out of the market, and how onerous the effect would be on the rest of us. Imagine a bandwith tax sold to curtail piracy, but effectively cutting off Linux distributions.
Maybe bootlegging will come back into fashion again. Instead of stills we'll have WAPs, but we'll still have the revenuers with the machine guns, dynamite, and axes.
So, for what will it be used? (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather than just getting mad about extra taxes, my question is: for what will the revenue be used?
Will it offset other taxes? Will it improve infrastructure?
My guess is it will simply be used to continue or expand already-broken social programs. Note that I don't necessarily advocate the elimination of social programs, but I don't think, for instance, the way to "fix" health-care costs is to subsidize them. (I think the true fix has to do with limiting liability and removing barriers to entry, incidentally.)
That's my problem - currently there is nothing that the government doesn't have enough money to do for which I want to pay more. That is, the government already provides the services I want at the price I'm currently paying. I don't want to pay more for services I don't want or need.
That's the fundamental problem with increasing taxes in the end: if people are not asking for additional services, then there should be no need for additional taxes. The problem is that some people do want more services, but the assumption is that everyone wants them. This is incorrect, as such things are usually typically very localized. I think the governments - federal and state - need to start paying more attention to geographical differences and stop trying to pass legislation that applies desires of people in one geographic or demographic region to all other geographic or demographic regions....
Ron Paul is against this tax (Score:3, Interesting)
Once again your bluff is being called. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure you work hard, and then bury yourself in work so you wont have to think about it. You, American voters, would even allow them to tax your income without a fight. Once, long ago, you had a spine and got upset about a 3% increase in the tax of tea, based on how the money was going to be used. Now you allow yourselves to be taxed at an insane level that nullifies the concept of liberty almost completely, seeing as you are a slave for almost half a year to taxes. Liberty or death? That's a good deal of both.
Please wake up all you smart computer people. Why is it the collective forces of the internet can create amazing projects such as software, operating systems, and the odd Groklaw, but has yet to create a great project for "hacking", tweaking, and tuning government via an organized effort of lobbying, letter writing, and education?
Come on. You sit there and allow someone to take almost six months of your life per year with only the smallest whimper? If that's the case almost nothing will gain your outrage.
Once again your bluff is being called. What are you going to do about it?
Tax on e-mail is unenforceable (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever this subject comes up I always marvel at the stupidity of suggesting a tax on e-mail. Not only is it unjustifiable, it's unenforceable.
E-mail removes revenue from the post office, but who cares? The USPS can hire fewer mail carriers as their volume decreases. E-mail runs mostly (if not entirely) over private infrastructure. There is no justification for an e-mail tax, because the government is not providing any significant e-mail related services. Even if you like the idea of Internet access taxes and Internet sales taxes, a tax on e-mail is simply unjust.
And how would we implement an e-mail tax? Even if we decided that it made sense for some reason - if we thought it would make spam uneconomical, for example - it's all over private infrastructure. How could we force SMTP servers to fairly account for the number of SMTP transactions they perform? E-mail server providers like Microsoft and Novell can be forced to build immutable, proprietary reporting into Exchange and Groupwise and other products, but the most common SMTP server is open source. If you are charged a cent per 100 messages you could easily recompile the SMTP daemon to be more generous. And what's to stop people from setting up new servers for unlimited e-mail? A tax on e-mail is unenforceable. I'd be surprised anyone is talking about it, if I didn't know as much about Congress as I do.
We are already taxed (Score:3, Insightful)
If the government really wanted to put a per-use tax on services like the Internet or e-mail...then they have to completely overhaul how we pay for the service in the first place (which again, is ALREADY taxed).
Is this driven by the phone companies? (Score:3, Interesting)
By the way check with your locality. Most cities get a cut of your cable bill too. Cary, NC gets about 15% of Time Warner's billable off the top as an 'access fee'. So you're being taxed at least twice and now maybe three times. By God I love living in a Red State that hates the guldurn gubmint and them thar commie taxes.
Maybe the wrong people are complaining though (Score:3, Insightful)
How about smaller government instead (Score:3)
How about we impose new fiscal responsibility laws on government instead.
Wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Taxing the internet can be good but has a peril (Score:4, Interesting)
All internet retailers should have to pay the appropriate state taxes. Even this will not be perfect, since given differences in how states tax it's not clear how to tax an e-tailer that operates out of a property tax driven state when they sell to a customer in a sales tax driven state. But this is a much lesser evil to remedy than the current situation.
Now let's turn to the peril. Right now we have an easy to apply rule. No taxes on internet sales unless there is a brick and mortar presence in the state. Once we get rid of that then legislators may covet levying all sorts of other taxes on internet sales. Sort of like how our phone and other telecom bills get larded up with hard to spot taxes and "fees". Some states might adopt protectionist provisions to protect local stores from national ones. That's not neccessarily bad in it self--it's a state's prerogative to do so short on interfering with interstate commerce. But that tort of meddling is likely to leave open all sorts of tax abuse opportunities.
Thus the parent poster is totally wrong that more taxes are bad. Indeed the more ways to tax people the more possible it is to work out fair tax structures than minimize artifactual consequences. But the parent poster's paranoia is justified. given more ways to tax states sometimes will tax more. The solution to the latter problem is quite simple. have the state set a maximum tax revenue figure that is the combination of all sources. then the state is left to argue over how to distribute that figure over the sources of taxes rather than rasing the final sum.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
No, it isn't. That would be Socialism. In theory, Socialism gives way to Communism; i.e., where the means of production are owned and controlled collectively. A government is supposed to be unnecessary.
All those Soviet, Chinese, Cuban, etc Communist parties you hear about aren't actually practicing Communism. Pretty much in the same way the US doesn't actually practice Laissez-Faire Capitalism.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides which, talking about military funding as a tax problem is a red herring. It's not an issue of insufficient revenue, it's a question of misplaced priorities. There's more than enough money to buy body armor, or up-armored vehicles, or whatever, for the military, in the budget, if people in Congress wanted to do it. They've just spent that money elsewhere, and decided not to pay for body armor. Giving them more money won't necessarily change that; I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't just keep doing that. If they've already shown that equipping our soldiers is a low priority, a few extra billion here and there isn't going to change that. They're going to squander it the same way they squander all the money they have now.
No, you're wrong (Score:3, Informative)
That's more an issue of military waste, rather than military funding. We hav
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A few poi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Seawolf class is designed to be able to project power.
The cheaper diesel littoral craft and subs do not project power.
Sure, the Chinese are tough, but only in their little corner of the wo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the government provided shoes with taxpayer money, I swear to God, people like you would claim that without taxes nobody would have shoes.
The fac
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not really in favor of "have the state provide for everything", but there are a few essential key liabilities that a state is here for.
Government taking care of people (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for one thing, there are the ethical implications of not doing so. Believe it or not, there are people in our society who cannot take care of themselves through no fault of their own. Why should we allow people to needlessly suffer and die when we have it within our means to not?
For another, ethical concerns aside, we as a society have a vested interest in making sure that our population is a healthy and productive one. If some members of it aren't, we should do what we can—for the sake of ourselves, if for no other reason, since we also benefit from their future productivity—to ensure that they have a chance to become so again.
Now, I know what you're thinking, that everyone on welfare and other government programs are leeches sucking off the teat of our hard-earned pay. And yes, there are a few people out there like that. But as weird as it may seem, the vast majority of people on government programs don't want to be. They'd love to be in the middle class, or even wealthy.
The problem is that most of these people either 1) don't know how to do so, or 2) have gotten so depressed with a society that systematically prevents them from making more of themselves because everyone is so damned greedy that they figure it's not worth their time and effort. They figure that they'll just end up right where they are now, just shorter of breath and one day closer to death. What's sad is that we as a country used to not be so much this way, but that these people are for the most part correct now.
Do I think that government is doing a spectacular job of helping people to help themselves? No, because it's become rather corrupt with greedy bastards who don't really care about you or me and just want to enjoy the lavish lifestyle of a Congressman. But do I think that one of the reasons government exists is to provide for the general welfare of society by doing things like providing assistance to those who need it? Yes, I most wholeheartedly do.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I think given the choice of ordering from Ottawa, and ordering from Hong Kong, I'd rather order from Ottawa given the selection, price, and reputation are up to it. I doubt I'm alone in this thought process.
Tom
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Like last night, I went to Zellers [Canadian ripoff of Walmart for all intents...]. They didn't have a SINGLE FAN
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Two possibilities here....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually I'd prefer that they
VERY Good (Score:4, Interesting)
For example:
Person X: $2000/month take home pay of which $400 is spent on things subject to a 5% sales tax. He pays $20/month in sales tax - or 1%.
Person Y: $8000/month take home pay of which $1000 is spent on things subject to sales tax. He pays $50/month in sales tax - or 0.6%.
So sales tax is inherently regressive. When sales tax doesn't apply to internet purchases, that means that those with internet access (the more affluent) pay less sales tax than the poor. So taxing internet purchases makes those who are more affluent (and more likely to purchase things from the internet) pay even less in taxes.
So I think this is EXTRA good!
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you, my luddite friend.
Internet retailers are more efficient and usually pay their employees more than local businesses. They require fewer employees and serve more customers.
The thing is: The middleman shouldn't exist in the first place, if you think about it. The internet has middlemen competing and makes their role in the process less and less prevalent.
I used to work for one. I made 20% more than the average best buy employee starting, and I had nothing more than a high school diploma. I worked my way up to supervisor and could have even had health benefits if I had actually been full time. The place I worked for, in spite of all this, pays its employees less than most warehouses.
This new tax will help some local businesses. However, for the most part, the internet will continue to replace these businesses even on a 'level playing field'.
And on a slightly less related note: Is anyone else annoyed that the government pursues any possible source of revenue? People do not want to pay taxes, and the government makes more than enough money to do everything it should be doing. The solution to the budgetary crises across the US should be obvious: Cut spending. I guess it's a lot harder to shrink government than to steal more money from the people. Sales taxes are especially bad because they disproportionately tax the poor (poor pay a higher % of their income to a sales tax than others do).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They'll still win. The state will just get its (un)fair cut of the transaction.
Online, I can search for exactly what I want, find a few highly rated variants of that
Re:Once again...not new taxes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Mind you, I vo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're joking, right? Every dollar I spend at retail goes through at least three rounds of taxation: federal income tax, state income tax, and sales tax. And God help me if I manage to save one of my tw