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Here's Sen. Enzi's bill advancing Net sales taxes:
http://politechbot.com/docs/enzi.sales.tax.bill.052407.pdf

Three bills dealing with Net access taxes:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.00156:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.01077:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00743:

And a podcast I and my colleague did with former House Majority Leader 
Dick Armey on this topic:
http://news.com.com/2324-12835_3-6185539.html

And the e-mail tax is back! No, it's not bill 602P. See below.

-Declan

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http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6186193.html

Net taxes could arrive by this fall
Wed May 23 23:01:07 PDT 2007

The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections 
could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove 
successful.

State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress 
for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to 
impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly 
taxes on DSL and other connections. One senator is even predicting taxes 
on e-mail.

At the moment, states and municipalities are frequently barred by 
federal law from collecting both access and sales taxes. But they're 
hoping that their new lobbying effort, coordinated by groups including 
the National Governors Association, will pay off by permitting them to 
collect billions of dollars in new revenue by next year.

If that doesn't happen, other taxes may zoom upward instead, warned Sen. 
Michael Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, at a Senate hearing on Wednesday. 
"Are we implicitly blessing a situation where states are forced to raise 
other taxes, such as income or property taxes, to offset the growing 
loss of sales tax revenue?" Enzi said. "I want to avoid that."

A flurry of proposals that pro-tax advocates advanced this week push in 
that direction. On Tuesday, Enzi introduced a bill that would usher in 
mandatory sales tax collection for Internet purchases. Second, during a 
House of Representatives hearing the same day, politicians weighed 
whether to let a temporary ban on Net access taxes lapse when it expires 
on November 1. A House backer of another pro-sales tax bill said this 
week to expect a final version by July.

[...remainder snipped...]

Posted by Declan McCullagh on May 24, 2007 in category economics

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The Politech general information pages and photographs are copyrighted by Declan McCullagh. Original posts distributed to the mailing list are licensed under a Creative Commons License.