Communications

Online sales tax reform may get all the attention, but there is another complex network of Internet-centric taxes that backers of reform say should be re-examined as well.

States facing Medicaid challenges should integrate mobile phones and other existing technologies to increase access to care, lower costs and improve health care quality for Medicaid beneficiaries, says a new IPI publication, “Reforming Medicaid with Technology.” 

Congress has a clear choice: Make complete and permanent the ban on Internet access and multiple or discriminatory taxes online, encouraging broadband access and e-commerce, or turn away from that national priority and allow the pro-tax thugs the chance to loot our digital future.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case that will help determine whether there are, in fact, constitutional protections from the ability of states to impose tax burdens on other states. Task Force Co-Chairman Bartlett Cleland of the Institute for Policy Innovation said, "The threat to the commercial Internet and to our constitutional rights from extraterritorial assertions of power by the government cannot be overstated. The Supreme Court needs to hear this case immediately to reaffirm the physical presence rule to protect our rights and to ensure the Internet continues to grow and improve human welfare."

ALEC wants to provide ideas of how legislators can act next, said task force private-sector Chairman Bartlett Cleland, IPI policy counsel. "It is critically important for the future of healthcare that state legislators start understanding what they can do and start to act, so we can drive down healthcare costs and get healthcare to more people."

Killing the goose to get the gold inside leaves one with only a dead goose.

A group of small mobile phone carriers in the United States has sent a letter to the U.S. International Trade Commission expressing opposition to a possible sales ban of Samsung Electronics' mobile devices in the country.

Private sector experience should be considered a plus, indeed requisite, rather than treated as a contamination when it comes to appointed government offices.

Nearly a half-dozen tax proposals affecting Internet operations are expected to appear on the congressional agenda, with many of them affecting broadband and cable services.

Tom Giovanetti testified before state legislators in favor of the tax break for cable customers, saying there was a “gross disparity” in the taxing of satellite and cable. “We want the winners to be determined by who has the best product offerings, not by some historical quirk or glitch in the tax code that no one got around to fixing because it was hard.”