Comment Re:a bit of legislative history (Score 1) 148
The typical phone and cable bill in the US includes on average a $4 levy by your local city/state. These are easy taxes for the localities to pass. Congress anticipated localities using "internet" taxes to try to balance budgets and banned them before many could pass them (even though a few got them passed before congress could act). This tax ban should have been made permanent years ago and waived those localities that jumped at the opportunity and put taxes in place. It specifically prevents cities from tacking on a $4 tax onto your internet bill and that's a good thing because those taxes are HIGHLY regressive and disproportionately harm the poor.
I'm one of those silly individuals that think nickle and dime'ing everyone with fee's and taxes on every little thing is bad tax policy. We need a straight up progressive income tax with no exceptions, deductions, credits or waivers. If they need more money let them raise the base tax. This BS where they tax every little thing and service is grossly unfair and tends to disproportionately shift the tax burden to the middle class/poor and excessively harms the poor. That $4 tax on your phone, cable and TV bill ends up being a 1% tax on the poor and 0.000001% tax on the rich. And when you add all the different $4 taxes on everything the poor can end up paying 10% of their income in taxes and fees on these utility taxes. The only "items" that should have taxes are those things that require a massive public owned infrastructure to build and maintain and those that use the system should be paying for it with a tax on the item that measures the use of that infrastructure such as a per mile tax on roadway use. Everything else should be a straight up income tax.