California Official Proposes Email Tax To Fund Failing Postal Service

A Berkeley city councilman has suggested that a tax on email may be a way to help fund the United States Postal Service, according to the blog Berkeleyside.

Wozniak told the council: “There should be something like a bit tax. I mean a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year… And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email,” perhaps one-hundredth of a cent. He said this would discourage spam and not have much impact on the typical Internet user. Wozniak went on to suggest a sales tax on internet transactions that could help, in part, fund “vital functions that the post office serves.”

That doesn’t make much sense to me. Let’s tax something new to help cover the extreme losses of something that is obviously not working properly. You need to fix the problem before adding new taxes. That means cutting the USPS days of delivery, cutting staff and increasing postal rates, not taxing internet use to cover the debt of the post office!