Death and Taxes are supposed to be the only universal constants you can depend on, but the Internet has long been a loophole many of us have enjoyed exploiting. If Rep. Bill Delahunt gets his way however, everything you buy online will soon be taxed at the same rates as their brick and mortar counterparts. Currently most Americans who buy from out-of-state vendors aren't required to pay sales taxes, but crushing government deficits could force legislators to take immediate action.

Normally we could write this off as one politician's pipe dream, but The National Conference of State Legislatures has voiced its approval of Delahunt's legislation, a law that could allow states to collect as much as $23 billion in new taxes. Not surprisingly, the Retail Industry Leaders Association also threw their voice behind the motion, a group made up of giants such as Wal-Mart & Home Depot.

The exact details of the proposed legislation haven't been made public yet, but we expect this issue to keep gaining momentum in the coming months. Perhaps they are hoping geeks don't vote?   

Back in April we reported on new legislation which, if passed, would give the president the authority to take control of the Internet. Over four months later it appears that not only has this bill continued to be worked on, but it is now closer to fruition than ever before. Revisions to the legislation made by the office of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, remains “vague” according to Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.

The legislation which is now up to 55 pages in length isn’t all controversial, in fact the only section that is being hotly debated at the moment is Section 201. In this section the President is permitted to “direct the nations response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” This would allow the White House to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks that are determined to be critical, and those companies will “share” requested information with the federal government. In plain English, this simply means that if your company is deemed “critical”, regulations determine who you can hire, what information you can disclose, and under what conditions the government can take control over your companies computers or network.

“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous version. The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process”.

Want to read the official White House response to all the controversy? Click the jump to read the statement made to CNET’s Declan McCullagh.