A U.S. senator said on Thursday that he would hold up a massive year-end spending bill if it included a ban on Internet-access taxes that he and several colleagues fear would harm state and local finances.
Delaware Sen. Thomas Carper, a Democrat, told reporters he would try to keep the omnibus bill from coming to the Senate floor if the ban was included in its present form, which he said infringed on the rights of state and local governments to raise revenues.
"If we end up with just an awful ... provision I would certainly object to bringing the omnibus spending bill to the floor and I suspect others will join me," Carper told reporters after a news briefing on the issue.
...
The ban is meant to replace a 1998 moratorium that kept state and local government from imposing taxes on the monthly fees Internet providers such as EarthLink Inc (ELNK). charge their customers. The moratorium expired on Nov. 1.
As written, the replacement measure would permanently ban those taxes as well as taxes on high-speed cable and DSL services not covered under the original moratorium.
The new version, which cleared the House of Representatives in September, would also eliminate access taxes that were in place in some states before 1998. Senate leaders brought the bill to the floor several weeks ago but pulled it back after it became apparent the measure might not pass easily.
While I understand the need for local government to be able to raise revenues the one thing this country does not need is more taxes. The internet has grown into such a powerful tool that its hard to imagine how anything got done even as little as 10 or 15 years ago. Information that once took days to get can now be had in a matter of minutes. Internet technology has been growing in leaps and bounds each and every year. Our lives are constantly getting easier because of internet advancement.
Like any type of business, taxing the internet will only slow its rapid growth. The taxes placed on internet service providers or online businesses would undoubtedly be passed back on to consumers, as all taxes are. What people fail to recognize is that any tax applied to a business is going to end up coming out of the consumer's pocketbooks when that business raises prices for its services. American consumers are taxed enough.
If this law passes it will more than likely not be as bad as it is being depicted. I doubt very seriously if any agency in the world has the resources to track internet usage such as the number emails a taxpayer sends or the number of websites he or she owns. If taxes get applied they are more than likely going to be applied to companies like AOL or Earthlink, who will in turn pass the charges on to subscribers.
Senator Carper implies that local governments will be in financial trouble if not allowed to tax the internet, but how have they been getting along while they haven't been able to apply internet taxes? If they are in financial trouble I'd say it is more than likely a symptom of overspending rather than under-taxing. Perhaps they should reconsider where they are spending our tax dollars.
We simply do not need any more taxes in this country.