The increased use of e-mail may be cutting into the U.S. Postal Service’s volume of mail and revenues, but it says reports that it’s working with a “Congressman Schnell” to tax e-mail are “completely false.”
Last week the USPS received a blizzard of e-mail messages protesting reports circulating over the Internet that “a Congressman Schnell has introduced Bill 602P to allow the federal government to impose a 5-cent surcharge on each e-mail message delivered over the Internet.” The messages said the money would be collected by Internet service providers and “then turned over to the USPS.”
Postal officials issued a statement Friday saying that “no such proposed legislation exists [and] in fact no Congressman Schnell exists.”
The USPS “has no authority to surcharge e-mail messages sent over the Internet, nor would it support such legislation,” the statement added.
The Canadian postal service, Canada Post Corp., was also victimized by the hoax. Authorities in the U.S. and Canada are investigating.
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