Arthur replied: > I suggest you take a look at the following. > > http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/jibc/9702-05.htm
Unfortunately, this 13-years-old article hardly answers any of the questions. You even ask some of these questions (e.g. whether the bit tax should be progressive) yourself, i.e. you haven't made up your mind yet. And when you write about a "new tax", it is not clear whether this should replace the old (income) tax or add to it. If it replaces it, it won't be sufficient in the first decades; if it gets added, it won't be accepted. There's much unclarity in that article. E.g. when you write that "The bit tax would not be a user pay tax.", who if not the users should pay it? Even if it will be collected at the ISP level, of course the users (ISP customers) will end up paying this tax. But not to maximize excertion, that won't happen on a Bit basis... There also seems to be a lack of technical background, e.g. when you note that "Collected by the telecom carriers, satellite networks and cable systems the revenues would flow directly to the national revenue service of the respective country." Did you know that when emails etc. are sent from A to B (even if they are in the same neighborhood!), these bits pass through many other countries, some quite distant from A and B, sometimes around the planet? Why should countries around the world collect taxes for a communication between neighbors who have nothing to do with these countries? (This would also mean that if the transfer happens to pass thru 22 countries, the tax will be twice as much than if the same amount of data passes thru 11 countries -- note that the number of countries crossed is not even within the power of the users!) And in satellite communications, talking of countries is pretty moot. And it's ironic to stress the possibilities of tax evasion in the old economy, when these possibilities would be even greater in bit-taxed (wireless) global communications. > http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/JIBC/9806-08.htm The concrete part about the bit tax is mostly a copy-paste job from the first article. Has there been any development of the Bit Tax concept in the last 12 years? (An eternity in the digital age!) Or was it buried ~10 years ago...? Maybe because nobody knew the answers to all those questions... Chris _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
