California is giving Switzerland a run for its money. California isn't considering taxing our breaths yet, but something that doesn't even require air to operate:
California state regulators have been working on a plan to charge mobile phone users a text messaging fee intended to fund programs that make phone service accessible to the low-income residents, reports said Tuesday...Socialism is expensive.
Charges may also be applied retroactively to messages sent in the past five years, which has raised questions concerning the proposal’s legality, Rufus Jeffress, vice president of the Bay Area Council, told the San Francisco Bay Area's KNTV-TV. The “alarming precedent” could chalk up to a bill of more than $220 million for consumers, the Mercury News reported.
The wireless industry argues that the fees would put carriers at a disadvantage since competing messaging services like Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp would not be charged the new fees, FOX11 reported.
Those against the proposal said that wireless customers already pay into the state’s Public Purpose Programs, which they call “healthy and well-funded” with nearly $1 billion in its budget, the Mercury News reported. But state regulators disagree, saying the budget has increased more than $300 million over six years, KNTV reported.
3 comments:
Wow, lunacy.
How can you collect back-taxes on text messages? Families with teenagers would potentially go broke with the 1,000's of messages that fly through the air a day. And, the tax won't collect a dime as all those apps with text-like features will replace the phone provider messaging system.
Stupid to say the least.
A few years ago, when Martin O'Malley was our governor, he imposed an unpopular tax on Maryland that we termed the "rain tax." Meaning that we were taxed on any areas (buildings, driveways, etc.) that we owned where rainwater would run off instead of being directly absorbed into the ground.
Remember the wisdom of Lady Margaret Thatcher, "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money."
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