Posted on 09/16/2010 2:35:42 PM PDT by Andrea19
A bill to prohibit already high cell phone taxes from going up even further has cleared its first Congressional hurdle today, passing out of a House Judiciary subcommittee. The Cell Tax Fairness Act places a mandatory five year break on all new, discriminatory state and local wireless taxes.
The move is certainly a welcome one. States have increasingly targeted cell phone service for revenue to cover overspending problems, mostly out of fear that broad based tax hikes anger voters. These taxes have spiraled out of control to the point where the average consumer pays 15% in taxes on wireless service...
Read more: http://www.atr.org/bill-halting-cell-phone-taxes-clears-a5393#ixzz0zjKf9sae
(Excerpt) Read more at atr.org ...
Help promote Conservative activism here & here & here & here
It is irritating that cell phone providers are "legally" allowed to advertise one price and charge another price.
On the one hand, I’m 100% against higher taxes on anything.
But on the other hand, is it really the role of the federal government to tell the states what they can and cannot tax?
27% combined cell phone taxes in Lincoln, Ne. I agree that the federal government is again overreaching, but this will fly with the populus. I wish they would control their own money grabs, e.g. - gas tax, social security, medicaid, income, airline, and the one that is coming, taking over private retirement accounts.
Is this even constitutional?
Even if you grant cell phones affect interstate commerce, can the federal government LIMIT the amount of taxes a state can levey?
It is one thing for the feds to say a state cannot levey any tax on an activity (like internet sales), because it is interstate commerce. It is another thing (imho) for the feds to allow taxation, but limit it.
Yea, but I’m sure most voters (on both sides of the fence) won’t think about the constitutional questions.
“Is it really the role of the federal government to tell the states what they can and cannot tax?”
Hear, hear! Yes, this works in our favor in this case. But what about if Congress decides taxes are too low in some other situation?
If they can put a freeze on raising taxes, couldn’t they also put a freeze on lowering them? (Sounds ridiculous, but that’s no guarantee against it not happening.)
Get the feds out of the business of telling local and state governments what to do and it’ll be better for all of us.
I just dropped my cel phone in a sink full of water while I was doing dishes and talking to a friend. Right now I have no complaints about my cell phone!
There it sat in the bottom of the sink, totally submersed. It was on and the screen glowing like it had no idea it was underwater. It was not there long but it was under a good 6 inches of dish water.
I’ve dropped cel phones from second floor balconies onto concrete, picked up and reassembled all the bits and the phone kept working. This one though I would never have guessed could be possible.
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