Taxing Voice over IP

Congress is working on legislation that would impose taxes on IP Telephony and other broadband services. Isn't this just indicative of how our "leaders" just don't get it. They can't seem to wrap their minds around the idea that sound is just another type of data once it is digitized. It goes on the same pipe, over the same lines as any other data. Imposing a tax on voice data carried over the Internet is just not going to be possible in the long term. Sure, you can put a tax on the subscription that a customer pays for a VoIP service, but in the long run VoIP is not going to be a subscription service (in fact if you tax it enough, it will be a shorter term). It is going to be an application that runs over your broadband connection the same way that your web browser or iTunes does. Apple's iChat software has for quite a while allowed you to have an audio chat with another iChat user, so long as you have the bandwidth to accommodate it. Google's new talk application does the same thing. And how long before video conferencing becomes the popular way to have these sorts of real time conversations over the net?

And why are politician's so interested in taxing voice services on the interent? Because they get a tremendous amount of money from all those extra fees and taxes that appear on your local phone bill. They need that money to buy votes, and if local telephone service is going to go the way of the dodo they are going to have to replace that somehow. And of course VoIP, the thing that is going to take that money from them, seems like the best target.

Politician's pandering to their niche constituencies and trying to buy votes need to stay out of the way of that which they do not understand.