Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
As we’ve noted here before, state and local politicians just love wireless taxes. They are going up, up, up. Dan Rothschild outlined this disturbing trend in his recent Mercatus Center paper making “The Case Against Taxing Cell Phone Subscribers,” and I discussed it in my recent Forbes essay lambasting the “Talking Tax.” Another new study [...]
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 [...]
[The following essay is a guest post from Dan Rothschild, Managing Director of the State and Local Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.] As cell phone ownership has tripled in the United States over the last decade, policymakers have increasingly seen mobile devices as a cash cow. In some states, consumers [...]
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 [...]
PFF today released the fifth installment in our ongoing series on “The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media.” This series of papers explores various tax and regulatory proposals that would have government play an expanded role in supporting the press, journalism, or other media content. In the latest essay, Berin Szoka, Ken Ferree, and I discuss [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
