No New Wireless Tax - McCain
No New Wireless Taxes by George Pieler - crossposted from The American Spectator.
The Wall Street Journal gives credit to Sen. McCain for trying to protect consumers from excessive, confusing, and duplicate taxes on wireless communications, aka mobile phone service. While Mr. McCain must share the credit with Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Chris Cannon, he was indeed the first to press for a halt in the states’ shameless milking of your cell phone bill. His Cell Phone Tax Moratorium Act, introduced in January, proposes a three-year moratorium on new cell phone taxes that unduly burden wireless consumers, compared with other communications services.
If anything, this initiative (clearly modeled on the Internet Tax Moratorium, which has done a pretty good job of restraining taxes on Internet service per se) is long overdue. As the Heartland Institute points out, wireless taxes rose four times faster than other taxes (aimed at goods and services) between 2003 and 2007. Sen. McCain cites the figure of 17 percent as the average state-local combined tax burden on wireless. The average sales tax, by contrast, runs under 7 percent.
There is nothing new about government chasing the hottest growth industries as a revenue source. Politicians should realize, though, that growth in any industry automatically generates more revenue without special targeted taxes and fees. Higher company profits, a bigger wage base, and more customers means more money rolls in from income, sales, and use taxes. Hitting up the winners in economic competition just increases the risk the party will stop sooner rather than later: if you want to keep benefiting from the robust growth wireless generates, don’t cut off the industry’s oxygen supply.(…more)
Tags: Cell, consumers, McCain, Tax, Wall Street