I suggest you take a look at the following. http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/jibc/9702-05.htm
http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/JIBC/9806-08.htm These may provide some answers. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christoph Reuss Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 6:45 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Questions on the "Bit Tax" Dear Arthur, please consider some questions on the "Bit Tax" you proposed: When bits are sent from A to B, who has to pay the Bit Tax: A or B? Or does it depend on who requested/initiated the bit transfer? (B requested it: web browsing, downloads.) (A initiated it: advertising / spam mails.) (What about anonymous remailers?) Who is A in the case of mailing lists like FW -- the poster or the listowner? Will the Bit Tax replace the income tax, or just complement it? The Bit Tax seems to be a tax on consumption (like the VAT) rather than a tax on production (like the income tax). But taxes on consumption have the disadvantage of disproportionately hitting the poor, esp. when basic needs are being taxes (and information is also a basic need in the information age). How are they supposed to pay it, if they have no jobs left? This tax will also "starve" them of information -- further worsening their chances of making a living. In the era of ISP flat rates, how and where will the amount of data be measured and collected, in order to quantify the Bit Tax? (A flat tax could no longer be called a Bit Tax.) Will the ISPs or the end users have to measure/declare the bit volumes in everyone's tax form? Given the low levels, will the revenues be worth the trouble/admin costs of measuring and collecting this tax at all? What will be the order of magnitude of the Bit Tax, in $ per megabyte? Will it be linear, progressive or regressive? Will there by upper or lower limits (tax-free)? With progressing technologies, the data volumes are ever-increasing. How will the Bit Tax take this into account? $ per megabyte would have to decrease every year, in order to keep the tax volume ~constant. How do you take technological inequality into account? E.g. at the same time, some areas within the same country already have a DSL high-volume connection while others still have an old slow dial-in with much lower data volumes. This would create large tax inequality. (It would also discourage using bloatware àla M$, which however is often an INvoluntary "choice", unfortunately, esp. on websites...) Will some branches or categories of users (e.g. FW ;-} ) be exempted from the Bit Tax, in order to avoid penalizing/discouraging non-commercial information exchange? Regards, Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
