Regulators have decided to find something to tax other than texting. The proposed levy made news in our pages last week. And everywhere else. But popular outrage at the idea is not what convinced proponents they needed to find other ways to deprive people of their money. It was Trump’s FCC.
Related: One of Life’s Certainties – New Hampshire Democrats Raise Taxes
The Federal Communications Commission, just last week, announced that messaging is an information service, not a telecommunications service.
The FCC ultimately sided with wireless companies, which argued that texting is an information service similar to email and not a telecommunications service over which the agency has authority. Federal law limits state authority over information services.
California Public Utilities Commissioner Carla Peterman dropped the idea.
A replacement tax? The list of possibilities should be considered endless. The abandoned texting tax was suggested to help fill a 300 million dollar hole in the State’s Public Purpose Program budget. A hole that exists because spending went up 300 million.
The text-tax was sold as a wash. The regulators suggested that adjustments to other taxes and fees would make it invisible to the texting public. To which you should call BS. How do you plug a budget hole with a revenue-neutral tax? You can’t. So, the idea has been crafted to serves some other purpose — a goal that will result in even more revenue.
If you’d like a local example, New Hampshire has it.
The Tax and Spend Shell Game
Merrimack County NH District 4 Democrat Thomas Schamberg has proposed (at least ) two bills that advance the charade New Hampshire Democrats ran on in 2018. Reducing property taxes by passing a state income tax. Here’s how it works.
Local property taxes pay for public schools. New Hampshire has a line item on the local bill to collect a statewide education tax. The money is misallocated by experts in Concord back to the towns from where it came. With varying degrees of failure. There are two other lines on the bill. One tax is for the Town. The other is for schools. The school tax is enormous. But according to Democrats, we don’t spend enough on education, and they intend to fix that while lowering your property tax bill.
To accomplish this impossible dream, they propose abolishing the statewide tax on local property and replacing it with an income tax. The proceeds of the income tax will go back to the towns to relieve those ridiculously high property taxes.
Related: I Thought Democrats Wanted the Rich to Pay More Taxes?
We’re Just Going to Count it first
LSR 2019-0479 relates to a state income tax (which we do not have) … Providing that revenue from any state income tax shall be returned to the cities, towns, school districts, and counties to assist in property tax relief.
By all means feel free to ask how replacing one tax with another will increase education spending while lowering your tax burden? How do Democrats intend to take less and spend more? They don’t.
Even if it were a wash, the prosed problem they claim would be fixed is not how [blank] is funded. The goal is to establish an agency or department within an existing agency to collect an income tax. Real estate, equipment, personnel, policies, procedures, a budget, a statutory mandate, and legal force. The power to tax income.
That’s what they are after.
If New Hampshire Democrats were Iranian Mullahs, this would be the goal of their nuclear program. They want “The Bomb.”
In other words, Democrats spend, then tax, then spend. An income tax is their spending bomb. It is the one thing they want more than any other. And they will say or do anything to get one.
