There’s a hearing going on as I write on a Louisiana bill (HB 569) that would create a new tax on the Internet bills of consumers, despite the fact that there’s a federal moratorium prohibiting it.

We just heard Attorney General James D. “Buddy” Caldwell say that this isn’t a “tax”, it’s a “fee.”  Louisiana is taking an interesting approach – HB 569 would impose a tax of 15 cents per month on ISP subscribers that would go to preventing and prosecuting Internet-based crimes against children.  AG Caldwell claims that it is merely a “usage fee”  — the price we pay for using the Internet.

But the Internet Tax Freedom Act explicitly sought to prevent the imposition of a tax that simply used different terminology. The Act defines a tax as:

(i) any charge imposed by any governmental entity for the purpose of generating revenues for governmental purposes, and is not a fee imposed for a specific privilege, service, or benefit conferred; or (ii) the imposition on a seller of an obligation to collect and to remit to a governmental entity any sales or use tax imposed on a buyer by a governmental entity.

Under this definition, a charge on Internet access is not like a fee imposed for recording a mortgage, for example. When you pay a recording fee, you pay for the costs you impose on the government for handling your transaction. If you were to pay a “usage fee” for law enforcement to deal with online safety, you’re paying for general services, something that law enforcement/government should be doing anyway to protect the public.States are cash-strapped right now. Louisiana is pursuing a worthy goal of trying to provide more resources for law enforcement for Internet safety. Taxing the Internet is just the wrong way to do it.

If Louisiana’s  law enforcement/criminal justice system needs more resources to pursue and control criminals, the state shouldn’t hesitate to re-allocate its revenue or even raise the taxes that already fund those efforts.  It’s absurd to tax ONLY Internet users when child predators do nearly all their evil in the physical world of school playgrounds and hotel rooms. Under the logic of the bill’s proponents, we should also be adding to the hotel tax, or to the cell phone tax since conversations occur on cell phones.

UPDATE:  The bill was deferred by committee vote. This usually means that the bill is dead for the session.

Ever wonder about this? In researching COPPA, I noticed the following definition of “Internet”

collectively the myriad of computer and telecommunications facilities, including equipment and operating software, which comprise the interconnected world-wide network of networks that employ the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or any predecessor or successor protocols to such protocol, to communicate information of all kinds by wire, radio, or other methods of transmission.

16 CFR § 312.2 (added in 1999). This definition comes from the COPPA law itself.

My quick and by no means exhaustive research (looked for the term “Internet means” in the CFR and U.S. Code) suggests that this is one of two definitions used, with slight variations, in Federal law (in less than a dozen places total).

The earliest reference I can find to this definition is from the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998 (the sales tax moratorium), which differed only slightly: “comprise” instead of “constitute” and omitting the “or other methods of transmission” part. This definition appears again in the child pornography rules issued in 2005 (28 CFR § 75.1).

The other definition I see is appears in the bankruptcy code (15 USCS § 163) and in the 2005 Internet gambling ban (31 CFR § 132.2 and 12 CFR § 233.2): “the international computer network of both Federal and non-Federal interoperable packet switched data networks.”

So which definition is better? Do both suck? Should we care? “Discuss amongst yourselves!”

But no kvetching about the use of the word “myriad.” Someone already beat you to the punch—and got smacked down:

[A] commenter objected to the proposed rule’s use of the phrase “myriad of” in the definition of the term Internet in § 75.1(f). The Department declines to adopt this comment. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed., 2003), “Recent criticism of the use of myriad as a noun, both in the plural form myriads and in the phrase myriad of, seems to reflect a mistaken belief that the word was originally and is still properly only an adjective * * *. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 821 (11th ed., 2003).

(70 FR 29607). Milton alone leading a federal agency in the use of language might well be the “Blind leading the blind” (at least in the most literal sense—Milton being blind and federal agencies, well…), but who are we to argue with both Milton and Thoreau?