I am assuming here that the ISP is who would get in trouble for not sending the money to the locality, not the N individual customers. I'm also assuming that if I sent my ISP money for the internet cost, minus the passthrough costs, the ISP would act as if I owe them money.
I get what you're saying about the fee being for the consumer. It's just like... OK then, well tell the consumer how much they are going to pay. You mentioned that the lobbying is to get rid of these locality's taxes, and I'm not pro-federalism so hey why not.
But all of these places have to collect the money anyways, so there is _a_ logic to how much to charge. Many places in the world, the price of internet is "type your zip code into a box and then we tell you". This seems eminently reasonable. This precludes a nationwide campaign to say exactly how much the service costs (unless ISPs just decided to eat the costs themselves!). But wouldn't it be good for people to know how much something costs?
I get what you're saying about the fee being for the consumer. It's just like... OK then, well tell the consumer how much they are going to pay. You mentioned that the lobbying is to get rid of these locality's taxes, and I'm not pro-federalism so hey why not.
But all of these places have to collect the money anyways, so there is _a_ logic to how much to charge. Many places in the world, the price of internet is "type your zip code into a box and then we tell you". This seems eminently reasonable. This precludes a nationwide campaign to say exactly how much the service costs (unless ISPs just decided to eat the costs themselves!). But wouldn't it be good for people to know how much something costs?