More Idiocy from our Neighbors to the South...and you thought Georgia had the dumbest politicos. No, there's competition for that title.

Florida to Tax Home Networks
By Michelle Delio | Wired News
02:00 AM Jun. 24, 2004 PT

Florida state officials are considering taxing home networks that have more than one computer, under a modified 1985 state law that was intended to tax the few businesses that used internal communication networks instead of the local telephone company.

Officials from Florida's Department of Revenue held a meeting on Tuesday to see whether the law would apply to wired households, and exactly who would be taxed. About 200 people attended, including community and business representatives. In 1985 the state passed a law to tax businesses using their own communications networks, because otherwise the state could not collect tax revenue on the businesses' local telephone service. In 2001, that law was expanded to make "any system that is used for voice or data that connects multiple users with the use of switching or routing technology" taxable up to 16 percent.

The law is so broad that it would apply to networked computers, wireless services, two-way radios and even fax machines -- or "substitute communications systems," as the state calls them. The tax would be applicable (PDF) to the costs of operating such a substitute communications system, not to the purchase of the system's components.