Sometimes the right hand is not always tracking what the left hand is up to here in Washington, D.C. Shocking, I know! That is why it has been so frustrating and head scratching to wonder how policymakers could find solace with taxing the largest influx of support for broadband deployment in a generation. It has felt like “one hand giveth and one taketh away.”
What has it really meant? For every dollar going into the ground, at least 21 cents of it has gone back to the government. This, of course, means less broadband is being built and fewer unserved Americans are getting served.
As KanOkla Networks CEO Jill Kuehny noted recently on Twitter, “Taxing grant money not only slows the pace, it takes the wind out of you. Carving swaths of people off your mapped plans to build fiber is completely undoing the intent of the grant. Who gets cut first? The most rural spaces.”
These concerns led to cheers from our NTCA office in Arlington, Va., last week when the Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act was introduced. This legislation seeks to promote greater broadband deployment by ending taxation of certain governmental broadband grant funds. The bill’s chief patrons, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS), have long been advocates of expanding broadband, with Sen. Moran just recently spending a day with our KanOkla Networks folks celebrating the Smart Rural Community they have built in Caldwell, Kan.
NTCA is extremely grateful that Congress committed tens of billions of dollars to broadband deployment grants through recent bills seeking to help close the digital divide in our country. Still, we know that taxing broadband grants will dramatically reduce the impact of these programs and likely leave the hardest-to-reach communities without essential connectivity for even longer. That is why NTCA is proud to support the Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act. We know this legislation will maximize the impact of every dollar granted for broadband deployment and further the mission of getting every American connected.
What can you do to support this common-sense approach to public policy in the waning days of this Congress?
There are NTCA members in 46 states and every single U.S. Senator should be on this bill, working to pass it before the clock runs out this year. So, for everyone who has received a grant or anticipates applying for one, share your story with your senators while they are home (which they will be shortly until the midterm elections). Tell them how the taxation of these grants has stopped the resources from going as far as they could and how fewer Americans will be connected. It is critical we see this through!