IP: Internet taxation, meaningless polls

[David Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>From: "Gillmor, Dan" <DGillmor@sjmercury.com>
>Reply-To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>To: "'David Farber '" <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
>
>
>Dave, many newspapers around the country ran an AP story this morning that
>showed overwhelming opposition to taxation of products and services sold on
>the Internet. It's a classic lesson in why polling can be misleading:
>
>http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/columns/gillmor/docs/dg091599.htm
>
>   QUESTION: Would you like to pay higher taxes?
>
>   Answer: Uh, is that a trick question?
>
>   Survey researchers recently posed a query like that to active Internet
>users, asking if they favored a national sales tax on online purchases. The
>results, released on Monday, were scientifically valid in their narrow
>context -- and about as meaningful as a Republican Party analysis of Bill
>Clinton's record.