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California wants to tax text-messaging
- yasp 8y agoCalifornia should tax email as well.
- PeanutNore 8y agoDoesn't California have a massive surplus?
- stevecalifornia 8y agoHere is a link to the raw proposed decision: http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M238/K227/238227359.PDF http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M238/K227/2...
- elipsey 8y agoThanks for that, the articles I've seen haven't linked it. Seems like the surcharge could be like MTS surcharge. The carrier is _permitted_ to apply a surcharge up to a defined maximum, ostensibly to defray the cost of mandated "Universal Service", emergency service, etc., but the funds are not collected by the state, and are instead kept by the telco. My MTS surcharge is about %20, before sales tax, btw. I infer that media coverage calling this a "tax" might be sort of a telco lobbying submarine. Edit: The more I look into this the less I know. I have had a lot of trouble finding details on who manages which fees. FCC has apparently designated several non-profit corporations to manage universal service fee funds, while some states have their own funds.* I can't find an authoritative answer to whether other surcharges are outside the scope of government management or not. Customer service won't talk about it (I tried once), and the legislation itself seems to describe what is _allowed_, but doesn't usefully summarize what is actually occurring. If anyone knows where to find more authoritative information about this sort of thing, I would like to know. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund#Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund#Adminis...
- mikeash 8y agoWhy would the telcos be against a rule that allows them to tack on a surcharge, blame the state, and keep the money?
- elipsey 8y agoWhat I mean by this is that I suspect that telcos are drafting this sort of legislation, and promoting articles to "Business Friendly" news publications that call surcharges "tax" in order to deflect blame. That is more or less what I think happened with the MTS surcharge.
- mikeash 8y agoOh, I see. I was thinking in terms of calling it a “tax” to kill it, since people generally hate that word. I guess they’d rather keep it quiet but that may not be an option.
- Eire_Banshee 8y agoThis is the most california thing Ive ever heard.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoCalifornia, the land where everything that isn't banned or taxed causes cancer.
- gammateam 8y agoBut is it? This is probably going to be on that "Included Government Taxes and Regulatory Fees" section of your cell phone bill that has no explanation whatsoever. I've had those everywhere I've lived in the country.
- weberc2 8y agoTexting is know by the state of California to cause cancer...
- freehunter 8y agoThey'd never be that specific. If the warnings were that specific they'd actually be useful. Instead there are warnings saying an entire building contains some unknown chemicals that will have an unknown chance of giving you an unknown type of cancer.
- deepuj 8y agoWell, texting while driving is a leading cause of road accidents..
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago> accidents I prefer to call them collisions because "accident" implies nobody is at fault.
- SilasX 8y agoThe propensity to raise taxes on anything other than land is known in the state of California to be a cancer.
- nkcmr 8y agoIf this is legitimate, this could _easily_ be classified as a violation of the first amendment. Yes, kind of shocking that such ideas are even being suggested, but I put low odds on this ever seeing a vote.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoedit: I'm commenting on the legal aspect of it, not saying CA should tax all WhatsUp messages. But they tax bread so... Nah, they tax TV stations and newspapers too. It's just a tax not targeted at free speech. 99.999% are "what he cheated on you again????" and "I just ate mcDonalds" type messages. They want to tax all messages and all services so it's likely to be kosher. I pay local tax on my phone bill....free speech my @ss, just a tax.
- inferiorhuman 8y agoCalifornia taxes hot food under the premise that it's been prepared at a restaurant (e.g. hot pastrami sandwich). Cold food is not (e.g. a head of lettuce) under the guise that it's less of a luxury. There is an exception for bakeries and even a hot loaf of bread is not taxed in California unless you were to eat it at the bakery.
- mc32 8y agoIt that what's behind the "Are you having it here or taking it to go?" even when you ask for a disposable cup for the coffee?
- inferiorhuman 8y agoYep. It's an attempt at a nuanced tax policy that doesn't translate well into sound bites.
- inferiorhuman 8y agoFirst amendment? That's a rookie move buddy. Ex post facto laws are explicitly prohibited by article 1 of the US constitution.
- ProAm 8y agoIsnt there already a tax on mobile phone service plans for this?
- sneakware 8y agoAlso retroactive to messages sent in the past 5 years haha what a joke
- simonw 8y ago"But the telecommunications industry revenues that fund the program have fallen from $16.5 billion in 2011 to $11.3 billion in 2017, it said." Is that because people spend way less time making actual phone calls these days?
- cascom 8y agoi think its because my cell phone bill used to be ~$120/month now its ~$80/month
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rhacker 8y agowonderful, now we will have a double down of the word libtard.
- anticensor 8y agoThey just discovered specific tax for communication, which has been existed for 19 years in Turkey. And not specific to texting.
- bmarquez 8y agoThe cynical part of me thinks they'll end up pushing people towards iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and Whatsapp...coincidentally services owned by Californian companies.
- jonathanoliver 8y agoMy thoughts exactly. This will push everyone to use WhatsApp or other 3rd-party tools. An unintended consequence of this would be less SMS spying by government agencies.
- Spivak 8y agoSMS is already ludicrously expensive compared to data rates, if consumers were price-conscious about this they would have already switched.
- paulie_a 8y agoI don't know how you can determine they are expensive. They are unlimited and included in the plan. There is a cost of course but if I send one or one hundred thousand, it's not going to cost more.
- x2f10 8y ago>It’s unclear how much individual consumers would be asked to pay their wireless carrier for texting services under the proposal. But it likely would be billed as a flat surcharge per customer — one of those irksome fees at the bottom of your wireless bill — not a fee per text. It's potentially unavoidable as carriers currently bundle text messaging w/ voice plans.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- michaelmrose 8y ago"A dense California Public Utilities Commission report laying out the case for the texting surcharge says the Public Purpose Program budget has climbed from $670 million in 2011 to $998 million last year. But the telecommunications industry revenues that fund the program have fallen from $16.5 billion in 2011 to $11.3 billion in 2017, it said." So you lied and said it was a charge to help poor people have access to phones and collected almost 25x the amount needed and used it as a slush fund. Now the slush fund is less profitable although still 11x the amount needed and you want to refill the slush fund. How about no.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoSomething feels off to tax an industry more when their revenue goes down. Am I missing something here other than the usual California hunger for taxes?
- nrmitchi 8y agoIt appears to be saying that a portion of those 16B in revenues go to fund the program, not that the companies are paying the state $16B/year.
- michaelmrose 8y agoIt seems you are correct.
- uberman 8y agoPoliticians love to earmark tax revenue to specific projects that people will support. I call it the "puppies are great excuse". The reality is that all revenue is part of giant slush bucket. Some expenses are discretionary and some not, but the bucket to pay is what it is. This is just the way politics and false promises work.
- FooHentai 8y agoI seem to recall there's term for when tax revenues are strongly linked to tax expenditure. Like when you tax road vehicles and use that exact tax to maintain the road network. But I can't recall the term right now. Seeing more of that thing, whatever it's called, seems like a desirable thing. The 'pooled funds' approach to tax/spending does lead to a lot of whacky outcomes.
- garysahota93 8y agoThis is so California. I really hope this doesn't pass. I also wonder the implications on messaging apps like WhatsApp / FB Messenger. Because if this did pass, as a Californian, I'd just switch to that full time
- cobookman 8y agoCan you opt out of texting to avoid said tax. If so I'd just move over to google Voice
- garysahota93 8y agoooo, that's a great idea! I do have Google Voice, so could totally do that..
- time-domain0 8y agoMost of the world uses WhatsApp to end-run around telcos (even though it's insecure and PRISM-friendly).
- hnaccy 8y agoCalifornia always wants more and more.
- itsangaris 8y agoAfter you get past the clickbaity headline, it doesn't seem THAT controversial. The tax "would be billed as a flat surcharge per customer — one of those irksome fees at the bottom of your wireless bill — not a fee per text". It would "help support programs that make phone service accessible to the poor".
- adrr 8y agoSlap a business tax on the telecoms and they can get tax credits for providing discounted phones to poor people. Seems inefficient to have people pay taxes to a phone company who then gives it to the state who then gives back to the phone company.
- russh 8y agoIt has to be done this way so everyone involved gets to grab a little of the vig.
- hueving 8y agoThat's still dumb though. Why not start slapping taxes on every service to pay for that service for the poor? Uber eats must include a food delivery for the poor tax. Gas must include a gas for the poor tax. This is what leads to the insanity that is our tax system.
- saurik 8y agoIf you read the actual thing instead of this stupid clickbait article the idea is to tax revenue from text messages in a similar manner to taxing revenue from phone service, so if you think taxing phone service isn't horrific then neither is this. The article is just super confused as it is like "this will probably be a flat tax, not per message" as if that is up in the air: it is a tax on revenue, so how it would seem in the end to a user would be related to how the user was being billed (per message or a flat rate for unlimited messages). Honestly, cell carriers are probably making tons of profit off of text messaging in specific that they don't deserve to make and it isn't clear to me they can pass more cost like this to a consumer as I bet they have already optimized for "what is the most we can charge", so I would be surprised if this even gets passed on to consumers at all.
- Shivetya 8y agothere is already a tax on phones, not they are merely separating each function the phone can do with the same bandwidth and taxing it. Here is a great resource for understanding just how much we are already taxed to use our cell phones [1]. Table 6 may shock you. of course it is passed onto consumers, all taxes are. embedded taxation is how governments are able to put large tax loads on a populace without them realizing it. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/cell-phone-taxes-2018/ https://taxfoundation.org/cell-phone-taxes-2018/
- elipsey 8y ago>> I bet they have already optimized for "what is the most we can charge", so I would be surprised if this even gets passed on to consumers at all. It's a surcharge (the bill is linked down-thread). It's passed on to consumers by definition. If it works the same as MTS, it would be a statutorily capped fee. "The most we can charge" is a different number from the most a consumer would willingly pay with complete information. Surcharges are not included in advertised prices, and can therefore be used to affect price obfuscation. This is why my 34.99/mo pre-paid plan cost $48.12. Because it is a fixed amout, it also makes pre-paid plans less competitive with higher margin credit based plans.
- r00fus 8y ago
- cronix 8y ago> In today’s decision, we determine in principle that the Commission should assess Public Purpose Program surcharges and user fees on all text messaging services revenue. Text messaging services consists of both Short Message Service(SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). SMS allows a cellular customer to send and receive messages of up to 160 characters to and from another cellular service customer[1]. > MMS is a newer service a customer can use to send text, photos and other information along with the message[1]. So this (dumb) proposed law would only cover true SMS/MMS texts, and not Signal/WhatsApp/Snapchat/Viber/WeChat/Messenger/Telegram/Hangouts/KiK/Skype/or any new apps coming out daily? The things most people are using now over regular text? [1] http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M238/K227/238227359.PDF http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M238/K227/2...
- toast0 8y agoDisclaimer: I work for one of the apps you mentioned. This is my own opinion and not that of my company. CPUC has the ability to regulate telecoms, but all of those apps are services that run over the internet, which is outside the pervue of the CPUC afaik. Most of them aren't making revenue on messaging either, so a revenue based tax doesn't work either.
- michaelmrose 8y agoProbably because it would be challenging to tax services that are or could be located out of state or even out of country but easy to tax telecom with physical operations in state. Also people pay nontrivial sums for telecommunication services. Easily $1200 -> $3000 per household. Taking a small portion of that money is still a lot of money. Facebook by contrast makes a lot less per user.
- correlator 8y agoThen once people stop texting they can tax: - Telegram - Whatapp - Wechat - etc. etc. etc. Good luck!
- tracker1 8y agoWhile that's not quite how it is, I tend to agree. Also, why don't they just raise the taxes for mobile phones in general. It's an obfuscation as a money grab plain and simple.
- jonathanoliver 8y agoThis reminds me of the time in the mid-90s when the USPS wanted to charge the price of a stamp for "email". I believe this was because the word mail was used in electronic mail.
- dickeytk 8y agohttps://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-602p/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-602p/
- jonathanoliver 8y agoI was referring to an effort during the years around 1993-1995. I was in a 3rd world country doing humanitarian work from 1999-2000 where I had no internet access so the email chain referenced by Snopes is new to me. If I recall, the idea really was floated around/tested but, of course, never implemented because there was so much backlash.
- eli 8y agoPretty sure that was an urban legend.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y agohttps://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-602p/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-602p/ Some good information here. In short, you are correct. There has never been a bill proposed that would require a surcharge or "stamp" for e-mail. The UN did suggest that a "bit tax" of 1 cent per 100 e-mails could raise over $70 billion/year, but it was never a real plan.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y agoCould you imagine how much less spam there would be though if spammers had to pay for every individual e-mail? I mean, yeah I still get junk mail that advertisers pay for, but we're talking 0-3 items per day. E-mail can easily reach 50+ messages per day.
- 8y ago
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y ago“California just doesn’t stop trying to get money out of you,” Gutierrez lamented. “What’s next?” Stop encouraging them!
- ww520 8y agoCalifornia is being taxed to dead. It really is time for another round of Prop 13.