http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43740,00.html
Vexing Questions About Net Tax
By Declan McCullagh (declan_at_wired.com
2:00 a.m. May 12, 2001 PDT
WASHINGTON -- Remember all those promises that U.S. presidential
candidates made last year?
Some libertarian and conservative groups sure do, and they're trying
to hold Sen. John McCain to his New Hampshire pledge to oppose
Internet taxes.
At a January 2000 event designed to distance himself from George W.
Bush, McCain signed a Citizens for a Sound Economy declaration
that says: "I will support making permanent the current ban on
Internet access, sales or use taxes."
But with the current moratorium expiring in October, the Arizona
Republican has quietly shifted his stand. He no longer talks about
banning all Internet taxes, and he has not reintroduced his bill from
the last Congress, Senate Bill 1611, which would have extended the
existing moratorium.
"McCain is allowing the Internet tax cartel train to roll right down
the tracks and doesn't appear willing to do much to stop it at this
time," said Adam Thierer, an analyst at the libertarian Cato
Institute. "I don't want to be overly harsh here, but this seems like
a rather abrupt about-face on this issue, considering how hard he was
nailing Bush on it during the campaign."
Currently, McCain is trying to broker a deal between the pro-tax state
governments -- which say uncollected sales taxes on Internet purchases
could cost them $12.5 billion by 2003 -- and a shaky coalition of
online businesses and groups ideologically opposed to granting
governments new powers to tax.
"We are trying to work out a bill that can not only pass the Senate,
but that can become law," said Mark Buse, McCain's staff director.
"Every version that Senator McCain has worked on has contained a
permanent extension of the Internet tax ban."
"We're political realists," Buse said. "A pure extension right now
does not have the votes to pass the Senate or the commerce committee.
It probably has just 6 votes out of 22 on the committee. Instead of
just posturing, we're trying very hard to work out language that will
pass."
Besides, McCain may have an easy out: By signing the CSE pledge,
McCain only promised to oppose taxes "if elected to the office of
president."
---
Porn worm in Congress: Sen. Robert Bennett may be the former chairman
of the Republican High-Tech Task Force and the current chairman of a
GOP working group on "cyber safety and critical infrastructure
protection," but you wouldn't know it by his own electronic security
measures.
On Thursday, Bennett's staff received the "homepage" worm, which their
Windows mail software dutifully forwarded to colleagues, contacts and
journalists on their press list.
[...]
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Received on May 13 2001
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