Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The Reason Foundation today has published the Telecommunications and Internet section of its 2011 Annual Privatization Review. Although there’s been a bit of lead time since the articles were written, they are still timely. Notable is the discussion on the collection of state sales taxes from Internet retailers, back in the news now that Amazon.com [...]
A few weeks back, now-former Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn blamed the retailer’s $1.7 billion quarterly loss and its decision to close 50 stores nationwide on the fact that its online competitors, Amazon.com in particular, “aren’t encumbered by the costs of running physical locations and in many cases don’t have to collect sales tax.” Dunn’s [...]
Heritage Foundation released a new study this week arguing that “Congress Should Not Authorize States to Expand Collection of Taxes on Internet and Mail Order Sales.” It’s a good contribution to the ongoing debate over Internet tax policy. In the paper, David S. Addington, the Vice President for Domestic and Economic Policy at Heritage, takes [...]
Reason.org has just posted my commentary on the five reasons why Federal Trade Commission’s proposals to regulate the collection and use of consumer information on the Web will do more harm than good. As I note, the digital economy runs on information. Any regulations that impede the collection and processing of any information will affect [...]
On Monday it was my great pleasure to participate in a Cato Institute briefing on Capitol Hill about “Internet Taxation: Should States Be Allowed to Tax outside Their Borders?” Also speaking was my old friend Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow with Cato. From the event description: “State officials have spent the last 15 years attempting [...]
Reps. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and Steve Womack (R-Ark.) have introduced “The Marketplace Equity Act,” which would open the floodgates to anything-goes State-based taxation of the Internet and interstate commerce. The bill essentially sacrifices constitutional fairness at the alter of “tax fairness.” Building on concerns raised by state and local officials as well as “bricks-and-mortar” retailers, [...]
Over the weekend, Janet Morrissey of The New York Times posted an excellent article on the U.S. government’s continuing crackdown on Internet gambling. (“Poker Inc. to Uncle Sam: Shut Up and Deal“) Ironically, her article arrives on the same week during which PBS aired the terrific new Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary on the [...]
States are ratcheting up legislation in order to capture sales taxes from on-line retailers, even as companies like Amazon.com aggressively push back. A closely-watched bill in the Texas legislature that defines Amazon’s distribution center in Ft. Worth as a physical nexus, thereby obligating the on-line retailing giant to collect taxes on sales to residents of [...]
The debate over the imposition of sales tax collection obligations on interstate vendors is heating up again at the federal level with the introduction of S. 1452, “The Main Street Fairness Act.” [pdf] The measure would give congressional blessing to a multistate compact that would let states impose sales taxes on interstate commerce, something usually [...]
That’s the question I take up in my latest Forbes column, “The Danger Of Making Facebook, LinkedIn, Google And Twitter Public Utilities.” I note the rising chatter in the blogosphere about the potential regulation of social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter. In response, I argue: public utilities are, by their very nature, non-innovative. Consumers [...]
May 27, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
