Douglas Alexander: “Today, Senator Carper and I introduced the Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007. Other cosponsors were Senators…”

“Today, Senator Carper and I introduced the Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007. Other cosponsors were Senators Feinstein, Voinovich, and Enzi. All of those Senators have been interested in this subject for the last few years. The bill would, very simply, extend a moratorium on Internet access taxes by State and local governments for another 4 years. This is a commonsense compromise of what can sometimes be a very complicated discussion about continuing the moratorium, without blowing a hole in the budgets of State and local governments. We all want to be careful about so-called unfunded Federal mandates. We want to respect State and local governments. But at the same time we want to create an environment that encourages technology. We believe this would do that. The background of all this is, briefly, that originally Congress passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act in 1998, which did an extraordinary thing. It said State and local governments could not tax Internet access for three years.”