What Internet Tax Means in the Timeshare Industry and to All Consumers

Are you ready to start paying taxes for surfing the net?

How about a tax when you send or receive e-mail messages on your cell phone?

Or taxes because you are a telecommuter, who saves the planet a little bit every day by being one less automobile on the highway during rush hour.

Sell My Timeshare NOW doesn’t think much of the idea either.

Currently, a ban exists that (1) prohibits taxation of internet access; (2) prohibits double taxation (which is taxation by two or more states or entities on a product or service bought over the internet); and (3) prohibits discriminatory taxes that treat internet purchases differently from other types of sales.

The moratorium, or ban on an internet tax has been in place since 1998. In 2004, Congress extended the ban. But on November 1, 2007, that ban expires.

According to a Reuters news article, “Internet service providers say the price of internet access could rise by as much as 17 percent if the moratorium on state taxes were allowed to expire.”

Most of us recognize that the internet is the most powerful communication and education tool in the world and has potentials that we have only just begun to tap. Because of internet access, you have at your fingertips, an instant connection to news, health information, financial resources, global research, friends, family, strangers, and the vast worlds of sports and entertainment. No one is too geographically isolated, too time-constricted, or too young, old, or impaired to benefit from the endless fountain of renewable information that flows not minute by minute but nanosecond by nanosecond via the world wide web.

The internet brings you images of natural disaster on the other side of the globe, videos of your grandchild sent moments after her birth, and vital information your doctor needs to accurately diagnose your illness.

Why would anyone think it is a good idea to make internet access more complicated, more costly, or even inaccessible?

If this issue matters to you, contact your United States Senator or representative to Congress and speak up. Urge him or her to do more than reinstate the moratorium. Let’s ban this tax permanently.