Gordon Wozniak, a Berkeley city councilman, proposed taxing email messages during a recent city council meeting in an effort to reduce the spread of “spam,” or unwanted emails.
Wozniak also said an email tax could raise money to keep the U.S. Postal Service functioning.
“There should be something like a bit tax … [it] could be a cent per gigabit and they would make, probably, billions of dollars a year,” he said.
Wozniak claimed the gigabit tax would prevent scammers from sending spam emails to thousands of recipients at a time.
The Internet Tax Freedom Act, which was passed by former President Bill Clinton, currently bans many forms of Internet taxation. But the act expires next year.