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A California official is bringing new life to the argument that the Internet -- including emails -- is an untapped revenue resource that should be taxed to help local economies.

Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak brought up taxing emails during a recent council meeting. He suggested the money collected, which would be part of a wider-reaching Internet tax, could be used in Berkeley's case to save the local post office.

"There should be something like a bit tax," he said during the March 5 meeting. "I mean, a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would make, probably, billions of dollars a year."

Plus, he said, there should be a "very tiny tax on email."

This idea goes beyond already-controversial proposals to tax e-commerce -- like buying used books on Amazon. This would be a tax on data.

Wozniak said the response to the idea has been varied.

"Most people don't like the idea of taxing the Internet," he acknowledged. "There are a number of people who say it's a good idea, but some are saying it's impractical and there's no way to do it."

Amid concerns that the government could one day turn to the Internet for a new-age funding stream, Congress in 1998 passed a law called the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which bans Internet taxation.

That law is set to expire next November.

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There was an excellent article on torrentfreak I can't find, basically, before freezers/fridges, you had to import ice 'fresh', then when the freezer came along, it put all those people out of a job, and no-one cared.

The same applies to large music-based distributers and this.

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We already pay for the internet, we pay our ISP who give us access to it, so bugger off!

No doubt someone in the US will campaign against this on the argument that it infringes their "free speech"....get it? "Free Speech".....ah never mind!

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internet taxes get dumb fast... last time they pushed for a tax on email one of the versions of the bill said to "tax packets traveling over the internet"... tax packets? seriously? they wanted about 1 cent per packet... I think they thought a packet was what an email envelope was or something...... because 99% of the USA would be broke just going online.... heck and if you taxed traffic, are you going to tax ARP packets and all the other background noise that comes to your modem / gateway? because its of course internet traffic... and if someone DDoS'es you, now you have to pay for what they did to you?..... love it......

heck places like TWC and Comcast include "background traffic" that you can't stop in your monthly usage..... I once left a DOCSIS3 modem idle on a Comcast line for a month jus to see how much background traffic it got...... 3.2GB of DHCP and ARP traffic along with ping floods, attempted dos attacks... etc.... and this was a modem that had nothing plugged into its WAN port, that is what Comcast reported on their website as it's monthly usage

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How would they be able to tax us accurately?

oh read what I wrote above... one of the old bills had that figured out by taxing "packets"... since ISP's can log packet statistics for your account.... makes sense right?.... *rolls eyes* dumb politicians

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oh read what I wrote above... one of the old bills had that figured out by taxing "packets"... since ISP's can log packet statistics for your account.... makes sense right?.... *rolls eyes* dumb politicians

Oh thanks! (Y) And yes--Politics in general are stupid, IMO.

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Like I said many times, it's only a matter of time before some smart government employee realizes we are all breathing and that they could tax us for the air we breath.

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Like I said many times, it's only a matter of time before some smart government employee realizes we are all breathing and that they could tax us for the air we breath.

yeah, via a "carbon tax" because we produce carbon dioxide........ :rolleyes: you know someone will try it someday.....

heck we already have the IMF saying Gasoline should have a mandatory $1.50 tax on all "Developed" countries to stop people from using cars...... great..... put public transportation in the middle of the USA... see how cost effective that is... idiots

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...and this guy thinks it is a good idea...you know...to reduce spam.

But email I'm as familiar with as a nagging toothache. I spend way too much of my day, as do many workers who dependon computers, hitting the delete key or ? even more time-consuming ? routing spam into the junk file and trying to block out the arrogant sender forever.

Often the email is in a foreign language that's all Greek to me. Or it's spinning me on some Atlantic Coast congressional race that is of no interest whatsoever. I'm also not in the market for awnings or pet food or a "tactical robot." And, no, I really don't care about the "Amway Boycott" or that "the National Farmers Union Endorses Raw Milk."

So leave me alone. And stop clogging my inbox.

There also are the scam scum. No, I wasn't aware that I had just won the $25-million online lottery and the check would be sent as soon as I turn over my personal info. Nor am I interested in the woman who wants to "share her love."

You get the idea. I'm not nearly as concerned about keeping snail mail afloat as fending off these spammers and scammers and denying them free access to my work station. Make them pay. Maybe it'll be a deterrent.

http://articles.lati...il-tax-20130325

Postage cost sure hasn't helped reducing unwanted snail mail. Gmail (and Hotmail), in my opinion and experience does a very good job in keeping spam out of my Outlook. I'll log into gmail every so often to look at the spam folder just to be sure it hasn't filtered something I want...but 99% of the time it "just works".

I can see them taxing goods purchased off the internet...though I wouldn't like it...it is something I would understand and think it within reason. Sending emails through a service that I'm paying for and is already taxed....nope.

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...and this guy thinks it is a good idea...you know...to reduce spam.

http://articles.lati...il-tax-20130325

Postage cost sure hasn't helped reducing unwanted snail mail. Gmail (and Hotmail), in my opinion and experience does a very good job in keeping spam out of my Outlook. I'll log into gmail every so often to look at the spam folder just to be sure it hasn't filtered something I want...but 99% of the time it "just works".

I can see them taxing goods purchased off the internet...though I wouldn't like it...it is something I would understand and think it within reason. Sending emails through a service that I'm paying for and is already taxed....nope.

and since most spam comes from overseas.... won't do crap.... but i'm not gona pay to use email I'd just use another service like facebook, oh want to tax facebook too?.... im sure facebook would have something to say about that.... run your own internal mail server then, how are you going to tax that if you only mail internally?

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This e-mail tax proposal is being made by ONE California official ... A councilman, Gordon Wozniak, representing District 8 of Berkeley, California. I hardly think this ignoramus is representative of the entire state of California and the U.S. Please, let us stop providing attention to these morons.

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^no, you must pay attention and rebuke him everytime, otherwise what he said will passed into Bill, and it will bill you up eventualy.

Govt will tax the ISP, then ISP will increases the fee rates in the end.

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^no, you must pay attention and rebuke him everytime, otherwise what he said will passed into Bill, and it will bill you up eventualy.

Govt will tax the ISP, then ISP will increases the fee rates in the end.

... damn it, you're right. :/

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This e-mail tax proposal is being made by ONE California official ... A councilman, Gordon Wozniak, representing District 8 of Berkeley, California. I hardly think this ignoramus is representative of the entire state of California and the U.S. Please, let us stop providing attention to these morons.

Apparently you don't know our government.

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