Mitt Romney On Technology Issues: Interview With Presidential Candidate

TechCrunch ^ | November 1, 2007 | Michael Arrington

[DWar]

MR: I do not want to see internet only taxes as you described them or access fees or email charges and so forth. We do enough taxing in this country and let’s not add more taxes. I’d rather see the tax for innovation reduced rather than expanded.

MA: It seems like along general party lines the Republicans wanted a permanent ban and Democrats wanted something less than that and they compromised on 7 years. Do you have any particular position on whether the ban should be permanent?

MR: Well I think it makes more sense to make it permanent.

People hear what they want.
To you it sounds as if he has left wiggle room to impose a tax. To me it sounds like he is against the internet tax and wants it to be permanently banned.

[DBrow]

There already are state sales taxes. They are not being paid when people order stuff over the internet across state lines. So Romney could simply close the tax loophole on this, like he closed tax loopholes in Massachusetts, and not raise taxes or add new ones.

The two statements quoted are on two different issues- one is about taxing the internet itself, the other is about sales taxes on purchases.

In one statement he’s clearly against internet taxes and wants to make it permanent. In the other, he’s talking about sales taxes, a different matter.