Spam Becoming a Taxing Problem
The "email tax" is no longer just an urban legend. Spam - junk email ads - is proliferating so fast that politicians have spotted a new Crisis they can Do Something About, and one senator is proposing an email tax to battle spam. U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota) is suggesting Congress impose a "very, very small charge for every email sent, so small that it would not be onerous for an individual or business that has regular (email) use, but it would be a deterrent for those who are sending millions and even billions of these emails."

And if it works, then our only problem will be reigning in Congress from constantly raising the anti-spam tax to fund all manner of projects. I can see it now. "We just need to raise the anti-spam tax by a very, very small amount, in order to better deter spammers - and to provide tax-free email service for schools," Sen. Dayton will say in the not-to-distant future if his anti-spam tax becomes law. "The increase would not be onerous for an individual or business that has regular email use, and it would help education. We must do this For The Children."

Of course, by then it'll cost you money to send your congressman or senator an email opposing the tax increase.

UPDATE: Sen. Dayton was just engaging in a little "public brainstorming" about possible ways to fight spam, and has no plans to introduce legislation to create an anti-spam tax on email, staffers said today after news media reports that Dayton had proposed a small tax on email in order to deter spammers.

Also, the email tax hoax mentioned above was named the number one online hoax in 2001 by PC World.