from the no-taxation-without-something-or-other dept.
A U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved a bill that would permanently extend a moratorium on broadband access and Internet-specific taxes that Congress has temporarily extended three times over the past 16 years. The House Judiciary Committee's 30-4 vote Wednesday sends the bill to the full House for a vote. The bill would also have to pass the Senate before becoming law. The bill, called the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act [PITFA], would also remove past exemptions for seven states, including Texas and Ohio, that had Internet taxes in place before the moratorium first passed in 1998.
A permanent tax moratorium on Internet-only taxes will allow the Internet to continue to drive the U.S. economy and serve "as the greatest gateway to knowledge and engine of self improvement that has ever existed," said Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican and committee chairman. The current Internet tax moratorium expires Nov. 1. "If the moratorium is not renewed, the potential tax burden on consumers will be substantial," with access tax rates that would likely exceed 10 percent, Goodlatte said.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday June 20 2014, @04:53AM
This seems like as bone thrown at someone, I can't figure out precisely who, to keep them happy while they slip in an internet sales tax, that would require collecting sales tax for every jurisdiction in the country, by every on-line vendor.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 20 2014, @04:56AM
It is only the access to the internet that does cost money (and is taxed)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday June 20 2014, @04:58AM
What an acronym!
In other news, this sounds actually good. Where's the catch, hidden loophole, or whatever?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 20 2014, @05:03AM
No catch. It means: no change to the status quo (which means no worse), but it doesn't make the things much better.
To table my point: sad is the day when we are happy not because the things got better but just because they didn't get worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday June 20 2014, @07:47AM
No catch? You didn't read very carefully
Fine, so there won't be a tax on your internet service. (If the Senate agrees).
But its clear they are going to turn around and allow sales tax on purchases you make out of state via the internet. This is just their two faced way of getting to play good cop, bad cop, all at the same time.
The cost of collecting sales tax for every jurisdiction, State, County, City, of every burg and hamlet where you might happen to have a customer is going to drive a lot of small business off the net.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 20 2014, @09:01AM
Well, it seems like it's a good time to reform your inane tax system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Shimitar on Friday June 20 2014, @04:58AM
AH! Over here we have a flat 22% VAT on basically anything but fresh food and still survive... Would LOVE to have free VAT heaven :) :) :)
Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 20 2014, @05:12AM
Thats what international trade is for. Tax shopping! :-v
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @05:13AM
Euro-land has VAT or IVA because it has no tariffs on borders but a high degree of trade imbalance accompanied by a need for state revenue that can't be adjusted by tweaking monetary policy (one euro, many budgets). The EU could save itself a lot of headaches by unifying the budgets to match the unified monetary system -- surrender national spending to Brussels -- and let the central power redistribute wealth between member regions according to need. That's what the US does: the rural states receive a massive wealth transfer from the urban states, and no one complains. That obviates the need for a VAT and allows for more progressive forms of taxation.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 20 2014, @07:51AM
Progressive taxation. You say it like its a Good thing. (In fact the word "progressive" is just a substitute for that which has already been rejected, wrapped up in new language).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by strattitarius on Friday June 20 2014, @07:53PM
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 21 2014, @12:53AM
Regressive (as applied to sales/vat taxes) is a myth, one born of practiced self delusion, but really fed by "soak it to the rich" jealousy, and a Utopian desire for equal outcome, regardless of effort.
Rich pay far far more in sales/vat tax, simply because they spend vastly more, employ vastly more, and pay far more income taxes on top of sales/vat tax.
Poor get government subsidies that more than make up for sale/vat taxes, making their tax burden much lower and, in most cases, negative.
Yet people arguing the regressive tax nonsense, without the benefit of a single economics class, continue ignoring the subsidies, trot out the old "percentage of income" nonsense time after time, even after these facts have been pointed out them them.
Its a specious argument.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday June 20 2014, @08:35AM
Hah... Either you're joking, or you've never been in California or known people here. Simply put, most of it's farmland or undeveloped, and aside from the few affluent areas, has been struggling enough since the dot-com crash in '00 that people are openly very unhappy at having money sent to other states when we need it.
(Score: 2) by monster on Friday June 20 2014, @04:39PM
That's false. There are also tariffs on many kinds of products.
For example, some time ago I bought an Unicomp Model M keyboard and customs applied a tariff of almost 40% of its price. I would have bought it anyway if I knew the real price, but it was a nasty surprise.
(Score: 1) by Shimitar on Friday June 20 2014, @09:00AM
Taxes... interesting subject.
Starting from the point that taxes are a necessary evil (i will not discuss no tax in this post), is it better to tax income or to tax spending?
If income is taxed, then spending should not be taxed.
If spending is taxed, then income should not be taxed.
If both happen, then i am being taxed TWICE.
Of course, if we tax income and not spending, it's unfair toward all the different kind of incomes which are somehow tax-exempt (lawfully or unlawfully) like drug-trafficking, offshore money, "black labor market", corporate games, creative deductibles and so on.
On the other hand, if we tax only spending, then hey, i go spend my money somewhere else altogether and we have a huge problem.
This is not even considering FAIRNESS of taxes, of course... on a VAT only system it would benefit mostly rich people who can afford to save huge money and kill the less wealthy who will pay taxes on every penny of their salaries. While a income only system can be unfair... a progressive system is always unfair toward one end or the other, while non progressive is unfair by definition since 30% of a little is way much more than 30% of a lot.
Anyway, the state always ends up with too much money to funnel trough waste and will always need more and increase taxes.
So maybe, after all, NO TAX should be a better option...
Ah, wait, then we will be spending our lives fixing the stretch of road in front of our lawns, 'cause the state will not have money for it... (and everything else, of course), ah, would there be a state at all? Probably not. And i don't think this would be a good thing.
Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.
(Score: 2) by geb on Friday June 20 2014, @10:00AM
One possible solution is to tax only things that cannot be manufactured, but tax them heavily.
Examples of things that can't be manufactured might include habitable land or electromagnetic spectrum allocations.
Taxes like that could only disrupt markets in positive ways. There is no way for such a tax to disrupt supply, since the only supply is the sale of existing units by previous owners. You would in fact be increasing supply, as anybody holding onto finite resources and refusing to use them productively would be unable to pay to keep them.
You would have to have a debate over the relative value of various allocations though. For example, you could not tax ownership of a square kilometre of empty desert at the same rate as a square kilometre of inner city.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @10:27AM
>Of course, if we tax income and not spending, it's unfair toward all the different kind of incomes which are somehow tax-exempt
What? What 'fair' is supposed to mean here?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 20 2014, @02:58PM
Wikipedia says, "A moratorium is a delay or suspension of an activity or a law. In a legal context, it may refer to the temporary suspension of a law to allow a legal challenge to be carried out."
Delay - temporary
Suspension - isn't this temporary? Otherwise it would be a ban or a disbarment or something? (If so, "temporary suspension" would be redundant.)
So I guess the way I read this is, "It's gonna stay this way forever...until we have a reason to change it."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 20 2014, @04:20PM
Your title included the word "Permanent", yet your pedantry seemed to ignore that word all together.
All laws are temporary.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 20 2014, @04:35PM
A permanent law would be one that survives until the end of the current government (although that might be a bit fuzzy anyway). A permanent U.S. law assumes that the U.S. government continues to exist, otherwise it wouldn't be a *U.S.* law anymore.
If we accept "moratorium" as being inherently temporary, "Permanent moratorium" expands to "permanent temporary suspension" which would cancel to "suspension," I guess? The whole phrase seems rather paradoxical to me because, as you pointed out, laws aren't really permanent either.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 20 2014, @04:37PM
Cf. "more unique"
I'm a programmer. I like having what we're talking about be well-defined, or know that it's inherently undefinable.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"