Assemblyman Charles Calderon of California wants the state to consider imposing a tax on new media downloaded from the internet. He is specifically targeting goods like iTunes which are currently exempt from tax. He claims that the sales tax should apply equally to online and in store purchases.
I think he might have a point.
Please, put away your rotten tomatoes. Don’t hurl them just yet. I don’t think that California will actually implement such a tax. It’s politically dangerous (Republicans in California are already labeling it a “new tax”) and administratively, it could be a nightmare to enforce. The internet is a vast and complicated place when it comes to taxation – which is why many goods are still sold tax free.
On the other hand, many goods are not tax free over the internet. For the most part, the nexus doctrine used in catalog and telephone sales tends to apply, and it has worked fairly well. If I buy a piece a dog bowl from LL Bean over the internet, as I did recently, I pay sales tax.
Why should music be taxed differently? If I buy a CD from amazon.com, I will pay sales tax on that purchase – why should my iTunes be tax exempt?
Scammers are at it again. I just received this email (above) earlier today which leads to a fairly official looking web site here. Be advised that this is not a legitimate email and this is not a legitimate web site.
The site has as its source, cjpowers.com, a web site owned by Christoper Powers of Orlando, FL. It may be that cjpowers.com has been hacked. The home page leads you to this text only: Vantom was here….mashy ya mo7′tar 3ashan mab2ash za3altk …b7ob ya klab e
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The proposed permanent internet tax ban did not take pass Congress this week. While this may despite a number of folks, it was not unexpected.
What did pass was an extension of the moratorium that was set to expire Thursday. The House voted 402 to 0 to extend the ban for a period of seven years.
The moratorium bans taxes on internet access, prohibits double taxation of a product or service bought over the internet and forbids taxes that treat online purchases differently than other types of sales.
This marks the third extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, initially passed in 1998. Despite pressure from a number of consumer rights groups and telecommunications companies, the ban has never been made permanent – in part due to opposition from governors who look forward to someday collecting revenue in their respective states for internet sales and access.
You gotta love the way that Congress does (or does not do) business.
With less than a week to spare before the expiration of moratorium on an internet tax (sometimes referred to as the Internet Tax Freedom Act, or ITFA), there is still no plan.
And in a very Congressional sort of way, Senators are trying various methods of getting their version of the bill passed… by such tricks as tacking them onto other bills. My favorite so far is Senator John Sununu’s (R- NH) efforts to make the tax ban permanent by sneaking it onto an Amtrak funding bill. Maybe he thought it was the information rail line instead of the information highway?
Screwier versions of the bill include linking your email service to “incidental” internet connections meaning that your email would only be tax free if you used the same provider for internet and email (hmm, wonder who’s driving that bus?). Since I am a Comcast subscriber (only by lack of other options), that means that my mac account, for example, could be taxable. Sure, that makes sense.
Proposals for a vote on the Senate were suggested for today but it’s more likely that there will be an up or down vote next week (note to Congress: November 1 is Thursday and the excuse that you were up all night making Halloween costumes might work for me, but doesn’t for you).
