Taxes
Seven US States will soon have to say bye-bye to the several hundred million dollars they collect annually from taxing access to the Internet.
The House of Representatives last Tuesday voted to permanently forbid states from adding fees onto residents’ telephone bills by extending a moratorium that was scheduled to sunset this October 1st.
“The last thing the American people need is another tax bill at their door come October,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who sponsored the bill told the Associated Press.
Supporters of the ban claimed that the taxation would slow down broadband deployment and encumber investment in the Internet.
Unions whose pensions depend on the tax revenue and legislators who saw it as unnecessary meddling into states’ rights opposed the ban, Watchdog.org reported.
The bill now goes to the Senate.
Under the House’s version of the Bill, the seven states that currently tax the internet will have to stop: Hawaii, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin, based on Congressional Budget Office data. Those states were grandfathered in the 1998 law.
“It is standing on its own two legs,”said Representative member Sheila Jackson Lee said about the Internet which is no longer a fledging enterprise. “It is not a toddler. It is a fully-grown adult.”
