November 2, 2007

Dear Congressmen,

Americans for Tax Reform applauds your efforts to end discriminatory taxation in the multichannel video delivery industry. It is a practice long overdue to be wiped from the books. Consumers should not be saddled with higher taxes as a punishment for choosing one multi-channel television service over another. ATR specifically supports the direction taken in H.R. 3679, though we would support amendments to improve the bill.

Congress has just acted by a wide bipartisan margin to pass a seven-year extension of the Internet tax moratorium, in part because of the inherent interstate nature of the Internet. In an age when every broadcast is the product of multiple states, which travels across dozens of borders, certainly video content delivery taxes are an equally valid subject for federal limitation of state taxing authority.

Now is the time to promote a free marketplace by forbidding discriminatory taxation on means of delivery of multichannel video.

As you know, ATR is strongly committed to the principle that the "playing field" must always be made level by bringing taxes and regulation lower, never higher. For this reason, in order to stop discriminatory taxation, and assure the best interest of consumers is served, we suggest language be added in your bill to assure state and local governments adopt lower tax rates for all providers, and speak to attempts to hide some taxes under the false claim that they are fees.

In addition to offering its support for your preemption of state discriminatory taxes, ATR would like to work with you on ways of protecting consumers from backdoor tax increases. We can offer our help in improving the language as we suggest.

Feel free to contact Derek Hunter at (202)785-0266 or at dhunter@atr.org to discuss ways to work together to eliminate this discriminatory taxation.

Sincerely,

/s/

Grover G. Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform

1920 L Street, NW - Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036
T: (202) 785-0266
F: (202) 785-0261
www.atr.org