Comments on: Net taxes could arrive by this fall

Congress is weighing whether to lift a prohibition on Internet taxes, and one senator warns an e-mail tax could happen by this fall.

[Stating]

I Will Become A Fonero

If Internet taxes are rammed through then I will cancel my broadband and work with the neighbors to use Fone and share a single connection over WiFi. Same with email -- get a single domain and share it. As for Internet retail, high shipping charges are rapidly killing that. I buy a $10 and then pay $10 in shipping costs. What a deal.

[little sue]

taxes on the comupter-on line services

WHY NOT TAXES EVERYTHING LKIE THE AIR WE BREATHE THEN TAXES WAKLING TALKING LIVING.YOU THINK WE ARE CASH COWS.MONEY GROWS ON TREE.HA HA??DEMOCRAT ONLY THINK FOR THEMSELVES.THEIR CARE ONLY FOR THE RICH NOT US (THE MIDDLE CLASS OR YOU CALL US THE CASH COW CLASS)THE INTERNET WILL BE FOR THE RICH ONLY.TAXES WATCHING TV.LISTENNING TO MUSIC.DID CONRESS GIVE THEMSELVES A RAISE?WHEN SHOULD THROW OUT THE COMUPTERS.JUST TAXES EVERYTHING.

[Commander_Spock]

That "Net taxes could arrive by this fall"....

... Are they not a bit late. The reasons: There is now INSTANT MESSAGING, so, why still use email (snail mail). On the other hand why not move up to LIVE VIDEO or have an USB Stick with "all" the information you need sent to you in the USPS mail or Courier Services!

SIX TO BEAM UP SCOTTY!

[gc1969]

What's the money going to be used for?

My subject is and should be the real question at hand. Here's something to think about? Congress and the Senate are attempting to get this going. What will the money be used for? My thought, to give themselves a big fat raise, like they do every year. Personally, I'm sick and tired of these "elected officials" padding their bank accounts, while there are people that are living paycheck to paycheck in the military. They want to tax the internet, tax e-mails, why don't they do something really constructive like figure out a way to increase the minimum wage..across the board, or make military members paychecks competitive. Just my thoughts.

[georgiarat]

The Need it to Buy Votes!!

The more they get the more they spend to benefit their special
interest groups who in return get (buy) them votes. Every
entitlement ensures votes, every business deduction ensures
votes, it is just a matter of which parties interest is served. The
democrats do it better by providing more entitlements to the
general populist while the Republicans provide more benefits to
business who then contribute more money for ads etc to
influence voters.

Oh, and the Democrats are in league with the Trial Lawyers who
are the real sucking machines of our money!! Every suit means
we spend more money on government, unnecesarry insurance,
etc and more cases mean we need more judges to warp laws and
thus require more lawyers.

[Madrone]

Collecting sales tax good, access taxs bad

Its a loophole that ordering online when they dont have a physical presence that I dont pay taxes (well, that I dont pay it at point of sale - we're suppoesed to declare it on income tax returns for state)

If i'm ordering something online I should definately pay the same amount of taxes I paid if I went to a local store and bought it... I dont "like" taxes, but I know a loophole when I see one.

On the other hand, more access taxes are bad

[suyts]

We pay taxes already.

When you buy something online, you are putting money in someone else's pocket. They in turn pay income tax on the money made from the sale. Do you really believe that the tax should be paid twice? What is the sales tax on a purchase made from China? Do you really want to move online retail off-shore? It is not a dodge to avoid a tax that should not be to begin with.

[extinctone]

Sales taxes BAD!

At least as long as they also take an Income tax. The tax should be at one end or the other, but our government has allowed far more than that. First they tax you when you earn it (income taxes), then they tax you when you spend it (sales taxes) they tax you for the value of what you've bought (property taxes), the tax you for what you've saved (intangibles taxes) and when you die they charge even more tax to your heirs (estate taxes).

And that's just some of the taxes you pay, by no means is it comprehensive.

The USA needs a serious tax system overhaul.

[chuck_whealton]

Re: Collecting tax good, access tax bad

As much as I also hate taxes, I would have to agree with you that it's only fair that purchases at electronic stores should be taxed the same as brick and mortor stores. It is a loophole.

I don't believe access should be taxed any differently than any other service we would purchase, nor do I believe it's right to tax email. Taxing email, including free email, is absolutely nothing less than pure greed.

That's probably why many have been so reluctant to let states tax electronic commerce to begin with - they're greedy. Why the heck would you tax access or email?

Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com

[Jane in KC]

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

"But with Democrats now in control of both chambers of Congress, the political dynamic appears to have shifted in favor of the pro-tax advocates and their allies on Capitol Hill."

Here we go aagain! The Democrats can go to you-know-where and take their taxes with them (along with any Republicans who agree with their skewed ideas); the sooner, the better.

[inlasvegas1]

When is this going to STOP!

Why does our U.S. Government always trying to squeeze more and more money out of us? When is this crap going to stop. Why doesn't the U.S. Government stop wasting the money we already give them instead of finding more ways of picking our pockets every chance it gets. Tax on phones, tax on electricity, tax on toilet paper so I can wipe my behind! The list is endless and all the while the rich get richer and poor get poorer. IT SUCKS!!!!

[cielazur]

Ridiculous

Politicians here make these ridiculous laws and taxes, they are just trying to squeeze everything they can out of the citizens of the US. The internet isn't a clean cut world, it's messy and tangled. There's no clear boundries sometimes. I think that the only reason they would do this is because they are getting greedier and greedier by the day. It doesn't matter how much they take from us, they are never satisfied. I would definately say we need to rethink who is "running" this country. They are too busy making fighting between themselves. They don't focus on the real world, instead of making up new taxes maybe they should start funding health care and other social programs. They need funding, but I recently read an article about how the government wastes tremendous amounts of money (like $20,000 mini fridges - it was in a Reader's Digest). They could put that to better use before making up stupid taxes.

[pcnet1]

Suicide by Tax

I can't wait for a group of politicians, whispered to by policy wonks deeply detached from the electorate, to vote in a new form, any form, of net tax....

Any get voted out of office immediately, and suffer consequences for their party for the subsequent 2 election cycles.

That would be very entertaining to watch.

[skeptik]

found money

I just found a huge source of money - larger even than abandoning the Iraq war:
The war on drugs. Waged for many years now, no progress made, no benefits except for those soldiers in the war who draw a paycheck.
If we legalize and regulate all drugs, we could spend 25% of what we spend on a better education/rehabilitation and spend the rest on whatever needed programs the government claims they need money for. No citizen would have to pay a single penny more than they do today. Drug users would spend less (illegal drugs cost more than legal drugs) and 100% of what they spend would go to the legal economy instead of the illegal economy. Many productive citizens now branded with a criminal record would again become valuable members of society, which in turn would reduce spending on govenment programs to care for these nearly unemployable citizens (due strictly to hardships in gaining worthwhile employment with the stigma of a drug conviction.)

We tried alcohol prohibition already and it failed. Can anyone tell me why the prohibition on drugs would be any different?

[Revolutn]

Only 1 08 candidate won't tax the net

If you want to keep the internet free of regulation and taxes at a national level, there is only ONE candidate running for the White House in 2008 who is already ON THE RECORD and has a proven voting track record of voting against ANY bill for net regulation or taxes.

His name is Ron Paul, consider supporting him if you want the internet to remain unregulated.

ronpaul2008 com

Later,
Rev

Infowars because there IS a war on for your mind

[declan00]

That's right about Rep. Ron Paul

Ron Paul won our 2006 CNET technology voter guide as being the most tech-friendly.

And we did a podcast with him recently when he reaffirmed his opposition to Internet taxes:
http://news.com.com/2324-12835_3-6175851.html

[cownet]

Tax Commerce Yes, The Internet? NO!

Commerce itself is, and has been, taxable. If states and municipalities are losing money, they will get revenue another way. For example, in Glendale, Colorado, if a small or large business makes a tax free purchase from another state, Glendale will actually force the small business to complete a return and pay them the 8% sales tax! It?s wrong, but its the wave of the future if revenues continue to fall. However, the internet, itself is already too taxed because of the oppressive government fees and taxes that we pay through the internet providers. Please, don?t keep adding even more! This would create a dangerous precedence. What?s next?

[Scott479]

Internet tax and MA. DOR

Just learned a smoking friend had bought tax free cigs on the net while living in Massachusetts. Somehow MA. tax officials tracked her online purchases and fined her and collected tax due. I told her to "move out here to Nevada." The credit card co. was likely legally bound to give the state her records......... how else might they have tracked her? Next we will read of general net purchases being nailed by the states no doubt MA. will lead the way.

[mariomiy]

Here is a way to civilize the internet.

All traffic goes through ISPs. Every packet has a header that identifies origin and destination. Those headers must be read by each node in order to send, receive, or forward each packet. The number of content bytes are also there, for each packet.

Countries and states want to tax those data bytes. It is their authority and the right given by citizens when they voted. There are many other problems related to the internet, such as dowloading multimedia content (bit torrent), mail spam, Voip, etc.

Here is my proposal:
1) Lower the fixed internet utilization fee to a low value, such as $5.00.
2) Add a variable fee based on the number of bytes transmitted, for each category:
sent email (megabytes)
downloaded content (gigabytes)
Voip sent (minutes)
etc.

There could be different tariffs for different levels of consumption. The taxes then would be calculated on those quantities, too. Each ISP would publish the amounts that would be paid to states, the federal government, content distributors (download sites), telephony switch sites, etc., and retain its own maintenance fee.

Benefits:
Only the beneficiaries would pay more for internet usage.
All distributors of data would receive a chunk for each ISP every month. The amount received by the multimedia content distributor sites would be shared with the content brokers (Hollywood, RIAA, MPAA), which would stop persecuting individuals and would negotiate with the ISPs, in bulk.
Spammers would have to reduce their sendings, because they would surpass certain thresholds otherwise.
It would be possible to measure global utilization of the internet more precisely, to fine tune taxing and other governmental activities related to the internet.

By publishing the monthly counts of bytes and amounts paid to each entity, it will be possible for voters to know who should get their ballot in the next opportunity, which entity is overcharging, etc. It will be a great help for democracy to function. The internet will be civilized and controlled by the users.

[Jetrosr]

Any grown ups out there?

It never ceases to amaze me the maturity level conveyed in these postings. 'Go ahead and tax ______, I don't own/participate, it doesn't affect me' Do you not realize we're on the same chunk of dirt, shrinking more and more everyday? What affects your neighbor/co-worker/mortal enemy affects you! Peel the 'United we stand' off your bumper and go send Osama a check. He's got a good handle on the 'I' is more important than 'We'.

[GrandpaN1947]

Read my lips liar Republicans do it again

The traitor liars are at it again. They take away the automobile and now the Internet. Will there be anything left for the ones without good jobs? Then we can just sit at home and wish we had a good government by and FOR the people.

[mikesims10670]

Republicans?

Didn't you read the article? It's the DEMOCRATS who want the taxes ... NOT the Republicans. Or haven't you seen the Dems history whereby they have been slowly converting our country over to a Marxist government / economy?

TAXES ARE BAD FOR COMMERCE!!!! DEMOCRATS SUCK!

Mike

[matthewcsims]

The State is always broke.

The dumbest thing I ever heard is if we don't raise one tax we'll have to raise another. They are going to raise property tax and income tax and all the other taxes regardless of if they tax the Internet or not.

I understand the basic concept that you have to pay taxes to get public services. The problem is especially in the state I live in, everytime it comes to collect on those taxes and build a new school or do basic road repairs they always say, "Sorry we're outta money".

So what I think everyone should do is next time a politician says the state is out of money, someone suggest to him that maybe we should just stop paying taxes all together.

That might not make sense to most people, but if you think about it, if the State is always going to be broke, then why make everyone else suffer by paying the taxes.

The State can just as well be broke if nobody taxes. So to me there's two solutions, everybody can pay taxes and the Government can be broke, or no one can pay taxes and the Government can be broke. Why are we paying taxes again?

[zmonster]

BULLSHIT!

********!

[black_lightning]

If they do I will blow up my computer!

I will take it to the shooting range and empty a clip of 30:06 rounds into the monitor and especially the hard drive and blow it to Hell because that is where it belongs after the government screws with it!