Internet Taxes?

Net taxes could arrive by this fall
By Declan McCullagh, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
1 2 Next >
The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove successful.State and local governments resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail.
........
Excerpt, page 2:

Internet access taxes
A second category of higher Net taxes is technically unrelated, but is increasingly likely to be linked when legislation is debated in Congress later this year. That category involves access taxes, meaning taxes that local and state governments levy to single out broadband or dial-up connections.

(See CNET News.com's Tech Politics podcast this week with former House Majority Leader Dick Armey on this point.)If the temporary federal moratorium is allowed to expire in November, states and municipalities will be allowed to levy a dizzying array of Net access taxes--meaning a monthly Internet connection bill could begin to resemble a telephone bill or airline ticket with innumerable and confusing fees tacked on at the end. In some states, telephone fees, taxes and surcharges run as high as 20 percent of the bill.
.........
Complete article here .

COMMENTS:

betmo said...
sigh. what more can i do? i am so tired. sigh.
Thursday, May 31, 2007 8:45:00 PM
Worried said...
As a retired senior citizen who lives on a low income, fixed budget, I am concerned. I have a number of email addresses and have increased them since google demanded emails for blogs as ids. It probably was a mistake to create new emails for some of those blogs. If taxes are imposed, I wonder if google/ blogger will allow changes so I can consolidate several blog ids into one email.
Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:57:00 PM