Letters: An idea to balance the federal budget

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If we implement this idea, we might balance the budget—or come really close to doing so.

Charge businesses 25 cents to send one email to any email address. Don’t charge individuals or not-for-profits.

Today, I got 488 emails in my junk box. It takes me time to sort those. Most are marketing spam or phishing emails.

Imposing a tax will help motivate the federal government to chase and collect taxes from spammers and phishers. It will have a chilling effect on spammers and phishers sending emails.

At 25 cents each, the 488 emails in my junk box today would have resulted in $122 to the federal government. If 250 million email addresses are hit each day with 300 marketing, spammer or phisher emails, that would result in federal email taxes of $250.3 million per day.

OK, maybe that won’t solve the national debt. But it would save me a lot of time by putting fewer worthless emails in my junk box.

–Woodrow Wilcox

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