The second meeting of the advisory commission on electronic commerce began in New York City yesterday afternoon by looking at the local, state and federal tax issues associated with internet access and telecommunications. The commission was established as part of last years Internet Tax Freedom Act, which passed into law in October 1998. It imposed a three-year moratorium on internet taxes.
The 19-member commission is chaired by the Republican governor of Virginia, James Gilmore and also include Ted Waitt, CEO of Gateway Inc, Michael Armstrong, CEO of AT&T Corp, Bob Pittman, president and COO of America Online Inc and the governors of Utah and Washington as well as other technology industry luminaries, politicians and special interest groups. Yesterday they heard from Annabelle Canning, VP committee on stage taxation; Jeffrey Eisenach, president the Progress & Freedom Foundation; Raymond Keating, chief economist Small Business Survival Committee and Ed Schimizu, Director of National Regulatory Relations at GTE Corp.
As expected, the Q&A session after the presentations got slightly bogged down in the purest of pure taxation discussions before getting even further bogged down in discussions between GTE’s Schimizu and AT&T’s Armstrong over the bundling of internet access services and telephony over cable – with interspersions from some of the commissioners. However, it did eventually get down to the questions of cost of internet access, whether or not that should be taxed; the so-called digital divide between those who can and those who cannot afford access of both broadband and narrowband services. There was much handwringing in evidence and the deliverables of the commission are still not clear. Things might become clearer after tomorrow’s all-day session, which aims to deal with how taxation at all levels will affect e-commerce followed by a short session on international taxes, tariffs and duties associated with e-commerce – expect much wagon-circling in that last part.
