You know how you you don't have to pay taxes on your internet service? (If you're a US citizen, at least). Yeah, that might last. In fact, it might not even last much longer than a month.

In 1998 the U.S. government passed a law preventing states from taxing internet access. The goal was to encourage the growth of internet service providers. The law is set to expire on November 1st, but the Senate is considering an extension.

There's some debate on the issue. But the good news for consumers is that the debate isn't centered on whether the tax ban should be extended. Instead, Senators are debating whether the ban should be made permanent or just temporarily extended.

The bad news is that if a compromise isn't reached within the next six weeks, the moratorium will be lifted and theoretically states could start issuing taxes. We seriously doubt they'll do that until if there's a good chance a new law will be put in place. But you never know.

Bad news for everyone out there pretending to be the IRS online: party's over. The hammer is coming down. Gone are the carefree days when every man, woman, and child could run wild through cyberspace pretending to be Treasury Department without fear of repercussion. 'Wait', you ask. 'Wasn't this illegal before?' Apparently not illegal enough, since the House of Representatives voted 407-7 in favor of expanding the the prohibition against using the Treasury names and symbols online.

Technically speaking, this has always been prohibited by federal law, but the penalties weren't stiff enough to deter this type of activity. This new bill would cause anyone caught to be subject to up to $25,000 in civil penalties, as well as a year in jail. A number of websites would be affected by this new bill, most notable -- and highly contested -- would be IRS.com. The domain, owned by InterSearch Group, Inc, claims itself as the "#1 Independent Tax Source on the net." Some politicians claim that IRS.com was "built to deceive" despite the fact that on the top and bottom of every page there is a disclaimer that clearly states that the site is not the Internal Revenue Service. Maybe the government is just upset that InterSearch is stealing their traffic.

On a completely unrelated note, another section of the bill states that if the IRS discovers that an individuals identity might have been stolen, it has to notify that person "as soon as practicable." The use of the word "practicable" tells us two things: 1) Letting people know that they might be a victim of identity theft is not terrible high on the government's priority list, and more importantly, 2) whoever wrote this bill is incredibly pretentious.

As if there wasn't enough to complain about with the IRS, add this to the list. The US Treasury Department is making a charge at forcing Internet auction sites to turn over the identities and social insurance numbers of their users to the IRS so they can keep tabs on income made through these types of sales. Sometimes you read a story and you don't even know where to start directing your anger.

The first, and most obvious problem with these sites handing over the SSN of their users is that they don't have them. And why would they? The strange but loveable guy who runs the flea market parking lot doesn't take the SSN of the people setting up tables. If he did, far fewer people would sign up. Online auction sites are no different. It seems as though Internet auctions may be victims of their own success. It is reported that nearly 700,000 Americans make their primary or secondary income from online sales. This is income that could easily go unreported, prompting the Treasury Department to consider action. But at what cost? Sure, Amazon and EBay and the like will take a hit, but will continue to profit. But many of the lesser known sites may not have the physical or financial stability to stay afloat if they are required to obtain and report the identities of their users.

In the end, the small change in the tax gap certainly can't be worth cyber-ransacking these smaller companies and ruining people's lively-hoods. Unless of course it causes the all-too-fun term "cyber-ransacking" to catch on, in which case these small companies may be deemed as unfortunate but necessary losses.