More now on moves to keep the Internet tax-free.
Democratic and Republican senators voted late Thursday 93-3 for a measure to extend an Internet tax ban for another four years. Republican Senators Lamar Alexander and George Voinovich, who had been trying to stop the ban, accepted a compromise proposed by John McCain that would allow states and cities to collect taxes on telephone calls made over the Internet.
Lobbyists who see a potential gold mine in Internet taxes still complain they’re losing money, even from the McCain compromise, a view not shared by many editorialists across the country.
Editorialists from The Las Vegas Review Journal wrote on May 3:
“Today, officers of state and local governments express fears they may "lose" billions of dollars in tax revenues if they allow the fast-expanding new range of communication services to "escape" taxation. But how can they "lose" what they never had?”
Of course, there’s the question of why the ban on Internet taxes must be revisited every four or five years.
Writing in National Review on line, economist Stephen Moore opines:
“An Internet tax won't make any more sense five or ten years from now than it does today.”
And that’s the Asman Observer.
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