Cal Thomas on taxing Internet sales. In 1998 when President Clinton signed the bipartisan Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibited state and local taxation of Internet access and Internet-only services, the purpose was to promote the commercial potential of the Internet, especially for start-ups and small businesses. Congress extended ... MORE
Daniel J. Mitchell on the Internet Sales Tax. I’m either a total optimist or a glutton for punishment. I recently explained the benefits of “tax havens” for the unfriendly readers of the New York Times. Now I’m defending a different form of tax competition for CNN, another news outlet that leans left. In this case, the topic is whether states can reach ... MORE
Market Fairness Act imposes an unnecessary burden. At a 2008 shareholders meeting, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos explained why he opposed requiring businesses like his to collect state and local taxes on their interstate sales. "We're not actually benefiting from any services that those states provide locally," Bezos said. ... MORE
by Stephen Ohlemacher. Tax-free shopping on the Internet could be in jeopardy under a bill making its way through the Senate. The bill would empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. The sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives. Under current law, states ... MORE 
Another way for government to separate man and money. The Republican Party is supposed to oppose tax increases and burdensome, unnecessary government regulations. But sometimes, they lose their way. The
most recent example is support by some Republicans for the misnamed
Marketplace Fairness Act, which should really ... MORE
Government intervention kills competition. Proponents of Internet sales taxes are asking the lame-duck Congress to bless their state tax cartel as part of a larger tax reform package by passing the Marketplace Equity Act (H.R. 3179) and its companion in the Senate, the Marketplace Fairness Act (S. 1832). These aren’t your average tax increases, ... MORE
LibertyPen is just one of the cogs. Until the late 1990s, individuals interested in Austrian economics, U.S. constitutional history, and libertarian philosophy had few sources of information. They had to spend hours scouring used book stores or the back pages of obscure libertarian periodicals to find the great works of Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, and other giants ... MORE
We will have to fight to keep free internet. The Internet is the world’s biggest economic and social success story of the past three decades. Citizens, NGOs, engineers and governments have all have joined together to write an amazing narrative. That success story now is under threat. In Dubai this December a group of governments will conclude a treaty ... MORE
FCC should not impose multibillion-dollar tax the web. The government doesn’t handle technology well. When Uncle Sam comes into contact with something new, his first instinct is to impose familiar regulations and taxes regardless of whether doing so makes any sense. So it’s no surprise the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ... MORE
It you can click on it, tax it! Small companies who want to sell their products online are in real trouble. Some Republican governors, eager to enrich their thinning state coffers, are endorsing a tax that would be imposed on products sold online.According to the National Conference of State Legislatures Strapped, states could reap as much as ... MORE
Heavy-handed regulations are highly overrated. The popular narrative in Internet policy circles these days goes something like this: The early days of the Net were a glorious unregulated nirvana, but eventually governments had to move in and assert more authority over cyberspace or else an unruly “Wild West” would have developed and left us ... MORE
The misguided ambitions of local regulators. An important law that would protect California consumers from state-level regulation of VoIP and other IP-based services passed the California State Senate late last week on a bipartisan 30-6 vote. The bill, SB 1161, now moves to the State Assembly, which has scheduled hearings for June 11. SB 1161 is ... MORE
Another clear and present danger to our liberty. Having failed earlier this year to foist an Orwellian kill switch on Internet free speech, Congress is now peddling a kinder, gentler piece of “cybersecurity legislation.” However, Washington’s latest attempt to play Big Brother on the Internet poses an equally clear and present danger to our ... MORE
More like the Patriot Act than SOPA. The Cyber Intelligence Security and Protection Act, better known as CISPA, is headed to the House floor this week amid a flurry of amendments and controversy. When the bill first gained notoriety, it was compared to the much-hated Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. But there’s a key difference. While SOPA was labeled as a ... MORE