As one of the original 13 colonies, you’d think that New York State would have a particular antipathy toward things like “taxation without representation.” And perhaps it does, just not when it’s the one doing the taxing.
The state recently passed a so-called Amazon Tax, a new law compelling out-of-state online retailers to start collecting New [...]
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Sen. Ted Stevens was right: The Internet is not a big truck. It’s “a series of tubes”–tubes that can be filled to capacity by “enormous amounts of material.” And, according to AT&T, that’s going to happen about two years from now.
In remarks at the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, [...]
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As far as solutions for California’s $14 billion budget deficit go, taxing “digital property” is nearly as outlandish as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed $4.8 billion cut in education spending.
Yet it’s being bandied about by Democratic State Assemblyman Charles Calderon, whose Assembly Bill 1956 would expand the state’s sales tax to digital goods–music downloads, e-books, pornography [...]
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Oracle’s Larry Ellison was given a bit of a respite from the financial beating he’s taken over the past few days by the empathic folks at the San Mateo (Calif.) County assessor’s office. The Oracle (ORCL) chairman, worth $25 billion according to Forbes, recently had the value of “Sanbashi,” his grandiose 23-acre Imperial Palace in [...]
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With millions of dollars in virtual currency changing hands each month in simulated worlds like EverQuest and Second Life, there are increasing reports of virtual-world moguls amassing real-world riches and scholars warning that these online worlds could be the “21st century’s equivalent of hiding funds offshore.” So it may be only a matter of time [...]
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Last year was an exceptional one for online retailers, in which e-commerce spending, excluding travel-related purchases, eclipsed $100 billion–a 24% increase over 2005. And 2007 promises to be even better.
Little wonder, then, that state and local governments are lobbying Congress for the right to tax not just Internet connectivity, but online sales as well. Earlier [...]
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