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from the never-met-a-tax-they-couldn't-hike dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Congress has voted to make permanent a federal law that prevents states or localities from taxing Internet access.
[...]
There's long been general agreement in Congress that taxing access to the Internet is a bad idea and shouldn't be allowed. But permanent consideration of the tax ban was held up by some lawmakers, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who wanted it to be passed together with the Marketplace Fairness Act, or MFA.
The MFA mandates that Americans must pay sales tax on all online purchases. It, too, has garnered majorities on both sides of the aisle, and a version was passed by the Senate in 2013—yet, it still hasn't become law. Durbin reportedly dropped his opposition to the access tax once Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised a vote on a new MFA later this year.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/congress-passes-permanent-ban-on-internet-access-taxes/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @06:24PM
Thats because nobody in congress wants markets that resemble anything near free or fair. How could they help funnel money to their friends if the markets were actually free or fair?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 12 2016, @10:14PM
RTFA:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 14 2016, @12:34AM
Hmm, so I'm assuming the MFA would make us pay our local sales tax, whatever that might be? Sales tax, notoriously, varies by city, county, and state. Online vendors would, presumably, have to cut checks to each jurisdiction in which the tax was levied. Such a requirement could be burdensome. I suppose the vendor could ask its customers to tell it the tax rate, but that's not much different than the system we have now, where customers are on their honor to keep track of their online purchases and pay the tax directly to the taxing agencies.