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In a rare act of bipartisan unity, Republican and Democratic senators last week presented legislation that would permanently ban taxes on high-speed Internet service to American homes.

The bipartisan moment passed quietly, and understandably so. There’s no bold new step here. The legislation would make permanent a prohibition originally enacted in 1998, the Internet Tax Freedom Act, and reauthorized periodically since. The House passed a companion bill last year.

But the Senate move came shortly after Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, proposed strong, utility-style rules to protect an open Internet, or net neutrality. That reignited the debate over whether regulation plucked from the telephone playbook, called Title II, would open the door to the imposition of state and local taxes and fees — the litany of charges on monthly phone bills.

There were echoes of different motivations in the statements last week from the two principal sponsors of the Senate bill. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and an author of the 1998 bill, emphasized the importance of the bill as a step to advance individual freedom. It was needed, Mr. Wyden said in a statement, to “protect the openness and viability of the Internet as a platform for commerce, speech, and the exchange of ideas.”

The Republican sponsor, John Thune of South Dakota, emphasized economic freedom. “For 21st century innovators and entrepreneurs, the Internet is their lifeblood,” Mr. Thune said. “We should be celebrating their success, not taxing the tools they use to achieve it.”

Mr. Thune opposes the approach being pursued by the F.C.C. chairman. The senator has prepared legislation that embraces the principles of net neutrality, including a ban on blocking web traffic or offering pay-to-play fast lanes for those who can afford it and slow lanes for everyone else. But his legislation would prohibit the F.C.C. from issuing regulations to achieve those goals.

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Mr. Thune also opposes Title II regulation because he fears it could undermine the intent of the Internet tax ban. AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for the senator, said in a statement on Thursday that net tax freedom law “eliminates a substantial amount of Internet access taxes, however it does not prohibit states and municipalities from levying new fees in a Title II world.”

The Internet Tax Freedom Forever Act, according to Hal Singer, an economist and senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, “limits the damage” from Title II regulation and its tax implications. Mr. Singer is the co-author, with Robert Litan, an economist and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, of a recent study that estimated the potential cost to consumers of Title II regulation of Internet service. (The Progressive Policy Institute’s supporters include the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which opposes Title II regulation. A spokesman for the institute, Cody Tucker, would not identify its financial backers, but he said that the research organization receives more funding from foundations, individuals and corporations that support Title II classification for broadband Internet service than oppose it.)

The potential pitfall, Mr. Singer said, is that the Internet tax freedom law mainly bans “general sales taxes,” but there is still room for states and municipalities to assess fees that are related to the “obligations of a telecommunications provider.” In their study, the two economists assembled a database of the taxes and fees states place on phone bills, and then assumed those charges would be levied proportionately on Internet broadband service.

State practices vary, but if you add them all up and assume the worst, the study forecast the additional costs to the nation’s consumers would be $15 billion a year. The Internet tax freedom act would bring that worst-case estimate down to $11 billion, as they calculated in the follow-up blog post.

The F.C.C. staff says this kind of analysis is off-base, raising unjustified fears. Mr. Wheeler’s plan, Kim Hart, a spokeswoman for the F.C.C., said, “does not raise taxes or fees. Period.” And, she added, the Internet tax freedom act “bans state and local taxes on broadband access regardless of how the F.C.C. classifies it.”

The fault line on the tax issue, as in so much of the debate surrounding Mr. Wheeler’s plan, hinges on how open-ended or how restrained his tailored model of Title II regulation of Internet service is likely to be.