Get Ready for $11 Billion in 'Net Neutrality' Taxes

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Investors Business Daily:

romises: Not long after FCC chairman Tom Wheeler swore that the FCC takeover of the Internet wouldn't result in new taxes or fees, it appears likely that new taxes will show up on Internet bills in the near future.

 

In a speech a few weeks before the FCC voted to approve its "net neutrality" rules, Chairman Tom Wheeler promised there would be "no tariffs, no new taxes" as a result.

 

Later that month, FCC spokeswoman Kim Hart promised that the new regulatory scheme "does not raise taxes or fees. Period."

 

If that sounds suspiciously like Obama's promise that under ObamaCare you would be able to "keep your plan. Period," there's a good reason.

 

In mid-March, Wheeler told a House panel that he couldn't, in fact, rule out a new Internet fee to help pay for the government's "Universal Service Fund" (USF).

 

By shoving the Internet into the agency's Title II regulatory scheme — which was set up 80 years ago to regulate the telephone monopoly — Wheeler made it possible to do so.

 

He said a special board representing federal and state governments was weighing whether to impose that tax. Right now, the USF is paid for by a tax added to long-distance bills.

 

"How they resolve things in the future I do not know," he told the House committee.