Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
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 [...]
Do-Not-Track is not inconceivable itself. It’s like the word “inconceivable” in the movie The Princess Bride. I do not think it means what people think it means—how it is meant to work and how it is likely to offer poor results. Take Mike Swift’s reporting for MercuryNews.com on a study showing that online advertising companies [...]
My latest Forbes column notes how “Taxes On Talking Are On the Rise Across the U.S.” with levies on mobile phones and devices skyrocketing. I build my argument around data and arguments found in Dan Rothschild’s excellent recent Mercatus Center paper, which makes “The Case Against Taxing Cell Phone Subscribers,” as well as an important [...]
San Francisco, often the breeding ground for “interesting” public policy proposals, decided recently to back off its mandate the would have required retailers of cell phones to label them with radiation levels and pass out material explaining the level of SAR in each device (SAR= Specific Absorption Rate). This has not been done anywhere else [...]
I was pleased to see columnists George Will of The Washington Post and Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe take on the Internet sales tax issue in two smart recent essays. Will’s Post column (“Working Up a Tax Storm in Illinois“) and Jacoby’s piece,”There’s No Fairness in Taxing E-Sales,” are both worth a read. They [...]
Consumers are buying more and more stuff from online retailers located out-of-state, and state and local governments aren’t happy about it. States argue that this trend has shrunk their brick and mortar sales tax base, causing them to lose out on tax revenues. (While consumers in most states are required by law to annually remit [...]
February 14, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
