Washington—President Bush said on May 8 that he favors a permanent ban on Internet access taxes, following through on comments he made during the 2000 presidential campaign. “We need to ban Internet access taxes,” he said during a speech before the Electronic Industries Alliance, a trade group that represents technology companies. “We need to understand how powerful the Internet can be to commerce and growth.”
The current three-year moratorium on Internet taxes is set to expire on Oct. 21. The moratorium not only bans taxes on Internet access fees but it also bans discriminatory taxes on sales placed over the Internet.
According to a report in Reuters, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer says that Bush plans to work with Congress to decide how long to extend the moratorium, noting that officials need to study how the Internet will affect government revenue.