The United States Congress is considering a 5 cent tax on email.

See the warnings here.

More recent versions of the hoax have added on a warning about that Congress is about to pass legislation allowing telephone companies to charge toll fees for Internet access.

• Bill 602P does not exist.
• '602P' is not a valid name for a Congressional bill. Bills in the House of Representative are prefaced with 'H.R.'. Bills in the Senate are prefaced with 'S.'
• Congressman Tony Schnell does not exist.
• Lawyer Richard Stepp does not exist.
• The law firm of 'Berger, Stepp and Gorman' does not exist.
• There is no Concorde Street in Vienna, Virginia.

As for per-minute charges for Internet access, the FCC, not the United States Congress, considered proposals to allow them but rejected the proposals in February 1999. The FCC says:

Thus, the manner in which consumers pay for Internet access is not before the Commission and the Commission repeatedly has stated that it will not change the manner in which consumers obtain and pay for Internet access. Rumors to the contrary persist, however, and the FCC has received hundreds of thousands of e-mails on the subject over the last two years.

This hoax started life as a bill supposedly being considered in Canada (and no, it is not true there either). Someone changed all the Canadian references to American references and yet another Internet hoax was born.

Recently variations have appeared that include warnings about toll fees for Internet access.

• Rebuttals
  • Congress to Block Imaginary Internet Tax Bill from the Washington Post
  • E-mail Rumor Completely Untrue from the United States Postal Service
  • E-mail Tax Hoax from the US Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability
  • No Consumer Per-Minute Charges to Access ISPs from the Federal Communications Commission
• Other commentaries
  • U.S Postal Tax on Email? from About.com
  • A Long Pay From Home from the Urban Legends Reference Pages

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