Net Taxes Could Arrive By This Fall: Purge Of Political Supporters To Follow In Spring

[DeSwiss]

Net taxes could arrive by this fall

By Declan McCullagh, Staff Writer
CNET News.com

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.

At the moment, states and municipalities are frequently barred by federal law from collecting both access and sales taxes. But they're hoping that their new lobbying effort, coordinated by groups including the National Governors Association, will pay off by permitting them to collect billions of dollars in new revenue by next year.

If that doesn't happen, other taxes may zoom upward instead, warned Sen. Michael Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, at a Senate hearing on Wednesday. "Are we implicitly blessing a situation where states are forced to raise other taxes, such as income or property taxes, to offset the growing loss of sales tax revenue?" Enzi said. "I want to avoid that."

A flurry of proposals that pro-tax advocates advanced push in that direction. Enzi introduced a bill that would usher in mandatory sales tax collection for Internet purchases. Second, in the House of Representatives, politicians weighed whether to let a temporary ban on Net access taxes lapse when it expires on November 1. A House backer of another pro-sales tax bill said this week to expect a final version by July.

"The independent and sovereign authority of states to develop their own revenue systems is a basic tenet of self government and our federal system," said David Quam, director of federal relations at the National Governors Association, during a Senate Commerce committee hearing on Wednesday.

http://tech.msn.com/news/articlecnet.aspx?cp-documentid=4934799>1=10036

:mad:

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. So will this be what finally drives people into the streets

to protest like there's no tomorrow?

Do the fucking politicians even really care?

Our nation is morally and ethically bankrupt, so it's no stretch on the politicos' part to go ahead and do everything they can to financially bankrupt each and every American (except that great group in the 1% tax bracket :eyes: )

[gobblechops]

2. If

it doesn't cost our coffers any shortfalls in any way then there is no reason to tax it,this article is bs imo not really informative and sounds like something to get Republicans worked up over sure is a lot of them quoted in the article.

[sam sarrha]

3. hey.. someone has to pay Tax's..We dont have lobbyists to be middle men to Bribe the Congress for us

so we are screwed... again

[Gman]

4. Won't happen going into an election year

if we learned anything from the GOP majority, that would be to do the dirty work in the off year. Otherwise the party is wide open for a "new taxes" rap.