Welcome to the tech policy podcast, your source for policy rants and raves from Tech Freedom,

your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and innovate. I'm Evan Schwarzstraber,

your host. On today's show, internet taxes, or lack

thereof. Joining me to discuss them is Katie McCalliffe. She is the executive director of

digital liberty, a tech policy non-profit, and she's also the Federal Affairs Manager at

Americans for Tax Reform. Katie, thank you for joining me. Sure. Thanks for having me.

So in 1998, Congress passed a law, the Internet Tax Freedom Act. Tell us about it.

So the Internet Tax Freedom Act originally passed in 1998, as you said, bans taxes on Internet access.

Now, what a lot of people might not notice or know is that when you look at your cable bill,

you're like, hey, I am getting taxed.

But what you're actually getting taxed on is voice and video.

You're not getting taxed on data, so you're not getting taxed on your internet access.

And that's because of the internet tax moratorium or the Internet Tax Freedom Act.

So what Congress has been working on for a long time is making this permanent.

And that is what we're working towards.

So the ban, as you mentioned, it's not permanent.

It's been extended six times since it was enacted in 1998, most recently as part of the budget deal that passed at the end of December.

And why was it important for Congress to pass this law in the first place?

Why does it matter if state and local governments can't tax broadband?

Okay, so it's important to keep broadband bills low so that more people can access the internet.

Really interesting, just kind of note about that.

There's a study by Austin Gulsby, and he was the lead economic advisor for President Obama.

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