The Internet access tax moratorium is the ‘most pressing broadban...

followed the moratorium passed in 1998, but the taxes that states may levy if the moratorium isn’t extended “would only serve to expand the digital divide between those who can afford broadband access and those who cannot,” Stevens said. Alaska has been helped by the moratorium because it can market its goods on the Internet to customers in the lower 48 states and the world, he said. Stevens didn’t say the moratorium should be permanently extended, as most industry supporters argue but tax officials vehemently oppose. He also called for the universal service fund to expand to broadband to help rural residents. The senator seemed to make a cryptic reference against net neutrality, saying the government “should try to stay away from doing things that would reverse the recent policy trends of encouraging broadband deployment through free market principles.” The National Association of Manufacturers sent letters to the House Judiciary and Senate Commerce and Finance committees Wednesday, asking for them to pass and send to the floor bills (HR-743, S-156) that would permanently extend the moratorium and also block “multiple and discriminatory taxes” on e-commerce. Manufacturing is the largest sector in business-to-business e-commerce, spending nearly a trillion dollars in 2004 for cost-savings operations like just-in-time inventory management, the group said. Its costs are nearly a third higher than manufacturers abroad, and ending the moratorium would raise the cost of doing business, it said.