Steve Chabot: “this is a perfecting amendment to the Delahunt amendment. The intent of the amendment is to make the moratorium…”

“this is a perfecting amendment to the Delahunt amendment. The intent of the amendment is to make the moratorium permanent. For parliamentary reasons, it was necessary to pick a date specific, a certain amount of time. In this case, we chose 99 years, which, in essence, effectively makes the moratorium permanent. Mr. Chairman, back in 1998, I worked with the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) to introduce and push legislation that would place a moratorium on Internet taxation. The effort resulted in the passage of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which placed a 3-year moratorium on three particular types of Internet taxation: taxes on access charges, multiple taxes, and discriminatory taxes. At that time, we were warned of the dire consequences for State and local governments if such a moratorium were enacted. However, contrary to these concerns, the moratorium has proved to be quite successful. Since enactment of the Internet Freedom Act, millions of Americans have gained access to the Internet, and electronic commerce has grown exponentially. The Internet economy has created millions of new jobs, and new economic opportunities for Internet businesses as well as more traditional companies. As a result of this rapid expansion, most State and local governments are experiencing massive increases in tax revenues and record budget surpluses.”