Slashdot Mirror
European Union to Tax Commercial Downloads
Jayman2 writes: "On a meeting this Tuesday the financial ministers of the European Union's member countries agreed to tax downloads from countries outside the EU. The purpose of the new rules is to close a loophole in European taxation on music and films downloaded directly over the net.
In the future downloads from outside the EU will be taxed relative to the European country where the customer is located (i.e. a person from Luxemburg pays 15% sales tax on a download from the U.S., whereas a Danish person pays 25%). Companies from inside the EU pays relative to the country where it is located.
The U.S. has launched a complaint about these new measures and is threatening to bring the case to the World Trade Organisation."
This idea has got to be the most absolutely insane thing I have ever heard of (never mind the practical unenforceability of it). Don't these morons know that once everyone has to pay by the kilobyte for net access, the "meter running" mentality kicks in and everything that has heretofore made it great and useful is dead?!
For example: how many times have people called Company X for information, to then be refered to www.companyx.com for that?
In this kind of scenario, people can rightfully say (provided a customer relationship exists) "I don't think so. Send it to me in the mail, because I'm not interested in paying for this information that you should be providing at no charge." Just one example--I'm sure others can come up with better ones.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
When I take something to "evaluate" at a hardware store, I pay (eventually taxed) money, and if I am not satisfied, I get my (therefore de-taxed) money back.
Such an act, if actually enforced (something I think is nearly impossible) will essentially kill off the current practice of downloading evaluation versions and paying later.
And perhaps that was the original intent.
If I fly to the US and buy these goods I'm expected to pay VAT on my way back into the EU, this proposal just brings downlaods into line with that. No big deal really (well no more than taxes being levvied at all).
Good to see the editors not adding any hyperbole or saying that proposals were law or anything! This is still vapourlaw at the moment.
I wonder if p2p will be classed as tax evasion. I remember customs officials in Poland taxing Free Software imports by perceived value rather than actual cost. Turning up at Heathrow with a holdall full of Brand New US sourced cd's and saying "I was given them" might not quite work either!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
"The American Chamber of Commerce recently said it feared the proposal would be complex to administer." I could just imagine having to send server logs to accoutants to figure out the taxes we owe to the European Union... "I think that IP is Denmark, are they part of Union? Wait was 29.24.56,,, or 27.23..?" Well maybe the massive bureacracy, will create some jobs for layed off Arthur Anderson accountants, who move to Europe to avoid charges.
The US and Canada have been at arms with each other about Canada's softwood lumber exports. The US says that the government is subsidizing the mills, that we are 'dumping' our lumber across the border, and so on, so they imposed a 19% countervailing duty on ALL softwood lumber imports from Canada - which, by the way, is causing the unemployment of thousands, just to raise the profits of American mills.
Canada has taken this issue to the World Trade Organization - twice - and the courts have ruled in Canada's favour both times, and the US totally ignored the rulings and imposed the duties.
Now the US might be hurt by people paying more for exports, and it wants to go to the WTO. Does anyone else see this as blatant hypocracy?
--Dan
How would this work, realistically? What about programs like Go!Zilla that download a file from several sources at once? Will you be charged the tax on each stream, or just on the whole file? How will they know?
What about interrupted downloads -- a transfer breaks, and you resume the next day... will you be charged twice for the same file?
I really don't see how this can work very well...
This will spur P2P development like nothing else can.
In the meantime, there might never be a better time to get into the anonymizing proxy business.
Even offering proxy purchasing services from low tax zones might be atractive to someone out there.
OK, maybe there isn't a bright side. Once one government tries it, everyone is going to want to play.
From the article
The proposal would deal with the purchase over the internet of virtual goods - sound, music, etc - which you can download
So they are proposing a tax over commercial transactions, even if there is no physical items purchased. If somebody is making money selling the right to download files, a tax is proposed over that sale.
Yes, it would be an accountant nightmare and it qould increase the price on a transaction, just like any other tax
Kilroy was here!
Yeah -- I really sympathize with that.
Not that I agree with sales/use/vat/duty taxes anyway, but that's beyind the scope of this rant. Why is it that whenever some sovereign nation decides to tax us (or worse, simply compete in the global market -- steel, lumber, etc.), our gov'ment gets it panties all in a wad, but when we tax and tarrif the hell out of everyone else, it's all fine and dandy?
Hypocritical scum...
Method of processing duck feet
Nice to see some stupidity from the EU for once..
This is LUDICROUS! I've downloaded gigabytes of Linux ISO's for free. If I were in Europe, would I then by TAXED on software I can download for free?
The people who've written this bill have absolutely NO understanding of the internet whatsoever!
This space left intentionally blank.