WASHINGTON – Members of Congress have often received constituent letters asking them to oppose legislation that allegedly permits the U.S. Postal Service to charge a five-cent surcharge on each and every E-mail sent over the Internet. This imaginary legislation is an Internet hoax and has been proven completely false, until now.
Recently state and local representatives from National Governors Association (NGA), Multistate Tax Commission (MTC), the Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA), and the Conference of Mayors met with Senate staffers and members of the technology industry pushing to tax the Internet. During the meetings, these groups insisted on concessions that severely burden both businesses and their consumers.
The NGA, MTC and FTA demanded the Internet Tax Non-Discrimination Act should provide a very narrow definition of "Internet access." This would require Internet providers to unbundle content and software from Internet service. The underlying motive is to give states the power to tax email service, parental filtering software, and stock quotes that ISP\’s now provide with their services.
"The NGA, MTC and FTA exposed their intentions to find new ways to create more money for their spending agendas on the backs of consumers," said Grover Norquist, President of ATR.
By ensuring that the Internet remains tax free, individuals and small businesses that could not afford access to the Internet have begun to share in the wealth of opportunities that the World Wide Web has offered. ATR is committed to seeing this trend continue, and the Internet is not burdened with taxes and regulations, harming future growth and innovation.
"It is time for these groups to stop their \’Chicken Little\’ Sky-Is-Falling rhetoric and let the adults pass a permanent ban on Internet access taxes," said Norquist. "A permanent Internet tax moratorium guarantees that Internet access is tax-free for all consumers regardless of how they access the Internet."