Taxing the Internet: Read The Bloggers’ Lips: No New Taxes, No Old Taxes, No TAXES!

Wait, death and taxes are inevitable, OK, for sure on one, but not necessarily on the other. But what if taxes cause such overburden that taxes actually bring death… death of businesses, death of access, death of wherewithal. Where does it end? Isn’t it enough that there are taxes on water, electricity, property, cars, licenses, dogs, for heaven’s sakes… dogs… if anyone ought be free of taxes for all the good they do in the world, it ought to be dogs… give them a 501.c.3 church exemption: for surely dogs minister to the world and bring much good. Why do you think they wear ‘the collar’?

But, for utter serious, the cocksure gnomes have put their little heads together and decided that in less than five months, we could all be paying extra taxes to access the Net via our DSL, Blackberry, cable modem, other wireless transmission services.

Why? The Feddie moratorium/ ban on taxing Internet access as well as keeping local governments’ mitts from slapping taxes from various kinds of goods sold on-line expires Nov 1… with no clear-cut allies in Congress, and much grumping and green green eyes by the 50 states who think they are losing massive revenues by not taxing Internet consumers.

A gaggle of powerful people want to essentially put up toll roads all over what used to be clear and open road on the Internet.

Lobbyists for states are being vociferous about how the ban cannot possibly be renewed, and certainly not for 2-4 years, for it could deprive the states indefinitely then, the reasoning goes.

The King of the Moles, is, surprise… a mole too! Many states are over-budget for rotting infrastructures, capital improvement projects they didn’t plan early enough and implemented too late when construction labor and supplies cost were at a zenith. And they want alllllllll of us, to help pay for their lack of foresight, their waste and tardiness. Far from home, far from where and what might benefit us, I might add. There’s always a King George in that woodpile.

The National Governors’ Association, which is lobbying against renewing the federal ban on taxing Net access, says reports from government auditors show no statistical correlation between levels of broadband penetration and Internet taxes. They mean, taxing the internet won’t affect anyone, or prevent anyone from access.

Ahem, just like property taxes on houses at first were just to help pave and upkeep the road in front of it… then more and more services were added, good ones, police and fire, for instance, but then more, schools, and new roads that the homeowner never traveled on, and then more. And more. And as the taxes rose and PARTICULARLY the add-ons being funded by them, over the years not only did this glut cause some to no longer be able to afford to keep their homes, especially in areas of gentrification suddenly arrived, but it eliminated a certain rank of new buyers, who could afford the monthly principal and interest payment barely, but not the added taxes.

And perhaps one of the most critical items… adding taxes means adding oversight, means adding prying-accounting to ‘audit’ and make sure all the good citizens are paying, and all the rest that has already made government grow as though suffering radiation sickness, fourteen arms and googly eyes on springs.

And besides, don’t we all already pay taxes all over the place for this little stem that sips up access to the Internet? When I read my cable bill, it looks like a wiring diagram for a nuclear reactor, so filled is it with minutiae about this tax for ‘user typing while looking disheveled,’ and this other tax for ‘user recording a movie while not talking on the phone” and a tax for “calling too many times to beg for a service rep to come out to the boonies to fix the thigamajig that blew down in the last mountain storm.”

And they want more? The government auditors, averring that there is no statistical correlation between levels of broadband penetration and Internet taxes… well, isn’t that a red herring? Isn’t that in one way, the lesser issue? Isn’t the greater issue about the monster’s maw? Getting taxes started further in relation to the Internet, means that Tax Beast Eying the Internet has to be fed and fed, as more and more add-ons to supporting cities and states and Feddies are dreamed up.

Has taxation without representation in House, Senate and/or lobby, become a fossil in the making? Don’t we have our own dream about how it all should go? And where is our lobby by the way, where is our lobby to out-lobby the other lobbyists?