It was only a matter of time before the government considered placing a tax on Internet access services.  The UN has proposed a 1-cent-per-100 emails tax but based on the number of emails sent every day that could be a significant dollar figure.

The idea is to tax the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Comcast and Verizon which will then do the lovely service of passing the charge on to you, the consumer.

NoInternettaxation has a petition you can sign and I would suggest you do so.  Things like this have been proposed in the past and have never gotten close to seeing the light of day.  Let’s make sure it stays that way.

But, according to the site, with pro-tax politicians in control of Congress, just about anything could happen now.  Just keep in mind, our government is supposed to be working for us, not the other way around; we are their bosses, so let’s tell them where to put this.

Governments around the world don’t seem to realize the near impossibility of taxing the entire Internet.  It can be done but it will ruin a good portion of it, small websites would die off, there would be no startups to speak of and existing startups would die.

As a matter of fact, Internet related businesses are moving up in the economic sector right now and the economy needs all the help it can get.  Only the US government is dumb enough to actually shoot its own economy in the foot, oh… wait, never mind.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 12:23 pm under Internet, Legal.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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