Posted on 11/04/2003 6:27:25 AM PST by GirlyGirl2003
Congresswoman goes on offensive over fear of e-mail tax
By RICHARD POWELSON, powelsonr@shns.com
October 31, 2003
WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., warned Thursday that governments might start taxing every e-mail transmission if Congress does not quickly renew a federal ban on Internet-access taxes expiring Saturday.
The National Governors Association and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander's staff, however, said they knew of no interest in governments taxing e-mails.
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Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has been working on a compromise to make Alexander and various states happy while continuing the ban in many states on taxing monthly Internet access services, such as AOL.
Tennessee, which had a tax applied to Internet access originating inside the state before the federal ban started in 1998, receives about $18 million a year in such tax revenue.
The state of Tennessee also is concerned that $360 million in annual sales taxes on other telecommunications - land-line phones, wireless phones and cable TV - could be lost under the current wording of the Senate bill, so Alexander has been trying to block the bill until it is revised.
Frist spokesman Nick Smith said he was not aware of any governments wanting to tax each e-mail. "We have not been contacted by any state government indicating that they would expand their desire to tax at this time. But allowing the moratorium to expire could potentially open the door for new taxes on the Internet."
Blackburn's warning came in a written statement sent to newspapers for publication as an op-ed piece, and she reiterated it in a subsequent interview.
Blackburn said she was concerned that if Congress does not renew the ban on Internet access taxes, local areas could tax an e-mail each time it passed from one computer server to another. She urged the Senate to quickly pass the House-passed ban on Internet access taxes.
"We can chuckle about (an e-mail tax) now, but we won't be laughing if America's thousands of taxing jurisdictions actually start taxing e-mail," Blackburn said. "And that is exactly what could happen if we do not extend this moratorium by Friday night."
Alexander spokeswoman Alexia Poe said the senator respects Blackburn and her views. "In his opinion, this is not an issue about taxing e-mails. That's not part of the debate. He's been very clear that his concerns are the federal government and Washington telling Tennessee how to do its business. He has not heard of any government trying to tax emails."
NGA spokesman David Quam said he has heard of no state interested in taxing e-mails. But he said states are interested in keeping millions of dollars in current revenues on various telecommunications services that they fear are at risk if the Senate bill is not revised.
Tennessee's state commissioner of revenue, Loren Chumley, said she does not understand why some in Congress are trying to give large telecommunications companies a tax break, cut state revenues and say it is "something good for consumers."
Said Chumley, "At a time when states are in the greatest fiscal crisis of all time, why is Congress looking at pre-empting states taxing things that are already on their books?"
If Congress misses the Saturday deadline to renew the ban on Internet access taxes, it could pass a ban later that is retroactive to Saturday, Quam and members of Congress said, so states would be unlikely to rush to new taxes.
Washington bureau staff writer Richard Powelson may be contacted at 202-408-2727.
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Copyright 2003, Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. |
The claim that the Senate is considering a "tax on every item on the Internet, to include a tax on each e-mail sent out" is incorrect. The Senate is merely considering whether or not to extend the moratorium on Internet taxes created by the earlier Internet Tax Freedom Act and Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act; the Senate is not proposing any specific Internet-related taxes at this time. (If the Senate passes S. 150, as they are expected to do, then no such Internet taxes could be imposed at all.)
Riiiiight.
How? Technically, how could it be done? How would it be monitored/regulated?
FRESHMAN REP. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) crossed the line from ordinary hyperbole to outright demagoguery last week when she blast-faxed a column warning that Congress was about to allow 7,500 state and local jurisdictions to start taxing E-mail.
Nonsense.
The Senate did fail to extend the existing federal moratorium on Internet access taxes before it expired at midnight Friday, but when the Senate takes up the bill this week it will include a provision making the moratorium retroactive.
More important, a sales tax on the monthly charge people pay to access the Internet is no more a tax on E-mail than the federal excise tax on telephone bills is a tax on every telephone call.
Here's what Blackburn didn't say:
Corporate Internet, cable and telecommunication companies are trying to broaden the bill to exempt themselves from paying billions of dollars in taxes to the states.
Tennessee Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Frist are trying to narrow the reach of the moratorium.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals has ruled that Tennessee has no authority under state law to tax Internet access, a decision that is being appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Blackburn's misrepresentation is disappointing because she has been a conscientious lawmaker who appears to have worked hard to learn new issues and her craft as a federal legislator.
No this is NOT the fake crap that went around for years. The Senate let a 5 year moratorium on taxes expire on Saturday.
Get your facts straight, reading would be a good start.
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