Six members of the U.S. House from North Carolina’s delegation — four Republicans and two Democrats — have signed on as co-sponsors of a measure that would ban taxes on Internet access and transactions.
The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act was introduced at the end of January and has accumulated co-sponsors up until recent weeks, when Reps. Virginia Foxx, R-5th; Walter Jones, R-3rd; and Patrick McHenry, R-10th; joined 174 other members of Congress in support of the legislation. The bill would help ensure Americans are not forced to pay new taxes on Internet access.
“When we prevent new taxes, we encourage economic growth by leaving more of taxpayers’ hard-earned money in their pockets,” Foxx said in a press release. “Any Internet tax is an obstacle to doing business in an Internet-dependent economy. By banning Web access taxes, we can help spur the growth of small businesses and jobs that depend on the Internet for increased productivity and competitiveness.”
The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act would extend the moratorium on Internet access taxes and duplicative taxes on e-commerce. Congress instituted a temporary Internet tax moratorium in 1998 to encourage growth of online commerce. In 2004, Congress extended the moratorium for an additional three years, which is scheduled to expire Nov. 1.
“Congress acted to ban harmful Internet taxation before; now it’s time to make good on that down-payment and permanently extend this ban,” Foxx said. “Everybody wins if we keep the government’s hands off Americans’ access to the Internet.”
The moratorium would apply to a variety of Internet access services, including cable, DSL, and wireless Internet access. According to Foxx, the bill would forever prohibit three types of Internet taxes: taxes on Internet access, the double taxation (for example, by two or more states) of a product or service bought over the Internet, and discriminatory taxes that treat Internet purchases differently from other types of sales.
Reps. G. K. Butterfield, D-1st, and Howard Coble, R-6th, signed on to the measure as cosponsors in June, and Rep. Heath Shuler, D-11th, was added in July.