Net of Taxes

摘要

Think twice before you hook two office computers together in Tallahassee. The Florida Department of Revenue could soon accuse you of forming a "substitute communications system" and sock you with a 9.17% state tax, plus additional local levies. The taxman's logic is simple. Like the wider Internet, local office networks increasingly offer the ability to carry all sorts of phone traffic, not to mention e-mail and videoconferences. Burger King, the U.S. Commerce department and the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies are among the many employers shifting their phone traffic to the Internet. Consigners are getting in on the act, too: 45,000 have chucked their local phone company and signed up with an Internet-based firm called Vonage. AT&T and MCI now plan to offer Vonage-style ser-vices, seeing a new way to compete in the local market.