FC: Dave McClure with a correction on taxing all email...

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: "Dave McClure" <dmcclure () usiia org>
To: <declan () well com>
Subject: RE: Financial Times commentary: It's time to tax all email!
Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 04:06:55 -0400
Organization: USIIA

Declan:

Sigh!  Before we accept Roger's wholesale assault on Internet users and
companies, we need to take a minute to correct his sloppy
misrepresentation of a basic fact:

The moratorium on Internet taxation that he describes doesn't exist.

There is a moratorium on multiple and discriminatory taxes on Internet
services, which prevents the states and localities from setting tax
rates higher for Internet transactions that for the same transaction in
a local store.  There is a moratorium on taxation of the cost of
Internet access, since this would make it more difficult for low-income
families to afford access to the Internet.

But there never was a time, a decade ago or otherwise, that Americans
were duped into believing politicians could not tax the Internet.  Heck,
we've spent most of the last decade trying to keep their greedy little
mitts off the Internet!

The portion of US law that forbids the taxation of many (but not all!)
Internet commerce transactions is the 1992 decision of the US Supreme
Court in Quill v. North Dakota.  In making its ruling, the Court said
they states do not deserve to tax transactions in the case of businesses
to which they provide no services.

The Court also said that if the states could find a way to simplify
their tax systems so that complying wouldn't automatically put small
businesses out of business, they could ask Congress to pass a law
permitting them to assign taxes to those transactions.  So far, the
states have been unable to figure out a way to simplify much of
anything.

Penny post? Collected by whom?  And who gets the money that is
collected?  And is there any evidence at all that the spammers won't
simply ignore the tax and keep sending their vile stuff?  None that I
have seen. . .

This is a truly bad idea that punishes the innocent but will ultimately
fail to correct the spam problem. Before we rush into such a disastrous
scheme, how about if we start by defining what specific activities
related to spam are illegal, and empower someone to enforce the law?


Dave McClure
USIIA




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