FCC Plans Stealth Internet Tax Increase

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission, without statutory authority, is proposing to expand its taxation and regulation of the Internet.

Congress is oblivious to Federal Communications Commission efforts to undermine the spirit if not the letter of Internet Tax Freedom Act by extending substantial new federal fees on broadband access. These fees could be as harmful, if not more so, than any that state and local governments might imagine. Yet many in Congress, unaware of the fees that might be applied to the Internet, applaud the FCC. Under its “Open Internet” or “network neutrality” proceeding, the FCC would regulate the Internet and broadband service providers with rules similar to those that courts have not once but twice ruled unlawful. By statute, the FCC regulates telecommunications services, not Internet services. Rather than wait for Congress to give it authority to regulate Internet services, the FCC asserts that power for itself by some imaginative interpretation of the Communications Act.

[Furchtgott-Roth is a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and founder of the Center for the Economics of the Internet]