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UN To Debate Taxing Internet Data
Wowsers writes "In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing, the United Nations will consider a European proposal to tax the internet based on data that gets sent. The proposal is designed to get money from large bandwidth users like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Netflix. Smaller companies that have high bandwidth requirements could be forced off the internet due to the taxes. 'The sender-pays framework would likely prompt U.S.-based Internet services to reject connections from users in developing countries, who would become unaffordably expensive to communicate with, predicts Robert Pepper, Cisco's vice president for global technology policy.'"
Could politicians be more daft?
Taxes on services will just shut out the small guys. The internet isn't just for commerce (or just porn), it's for a ton of other things. The principle of Net Neutrality ensures equal bandwidth for all. This tax would just require profitability, when many sites barely run even.
"In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing"
That is the most insightful summary...ever
no comment
The UN don't get their money from (directly) taxing companies or people. The member states pay.
Fund your failed economy some other way.
Austerity and bailouts only prolong the suffering.
the majority of the real economy is small and medium business.
taxes, regulations, and bureaucratic nonsense destroy small and medium business, while giving government and large corporations total advantage, in fact they are working together. in this way, the big dogs get to buy up, or remove all the small fish.
and what do democrats and republicans do? they keep doing the same thing.
regulate and tax the real economy to death.
while ensuring their own survival and their corporate owners.
and if you think voting Democrat is going to address this, you're a fucking moron.
if you think MORE regulation, and more taxes, is going to fix this, you're a fucking moron.
. . . and anchor it in Boston Harbor. Your Internet taxes can be loaded the next morning, after your tea has been delivered.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I often find internet data taxing
While unlikely (hopefully) to pass, this sort if thing is exactly the reason the United States has been so reluctant to give up its nominal control of the Internet's architecture, nevermind why so many technologists are tacitly OK with the US's continued dominance.
The nations of the world, given equal weight, err toward censorship, and many regimes with UN votes have deeply vested interests in clamping down on the extraordinary free-for-all of information exchange that the current Internet provides. I for one want the United Nations to have no role at this level, and both hope and expect the US to refuse ratification should it actually come to pass.
GeekNights!
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I actually read the linked article and also skimmed through the leaked documents. I really can't find the things that the article is claiming are in there. From what I can make out, the leaked documents talk about taxes when billing telecommunication across borders (e.g., to prevent taxing services twice), like mobile phone roaming. How the article claims that this is about taxing large companies like Google and stuff is really beyond me. Can anybody point me to the part where it says that?
The whole article just seems inflammatory and some kind of anti-UN, anti-European reflex. I suppose mission accomplished, the knee-jerk reactions are already pouring in...
I'm just amazed they found a situation where the conservative canard "If you want less of something, tax it" is actually accurate and relevant. The internet should be subsidized, not taxed. You'll get it all back from an improved economy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I pay for my connection. Facebook, et al pay for their connection. Shouldn't be anything besides this.
The problem is who pays the middle man who connects you and Facebook?
In particular, international cables aren't exactly cheap, and someone has to foot the bill.
Up until now, the problem has been amiably solved by the ISPs and hosting providers billing you extra to pay their carriers, who in turn enter peering agreements and pay each other based on how much data flows. This really only works well when there is a bidirectional flow - in some cases where data mainly flows one way, this becomes a bit drain on one end and a money drain on the other. Instead of having to cut the line as unprofitable, and leave customers without a connection, the ISPs look for alternative solutions.
An internet tax might not be the best idea, but there may be something to this being a social problem -- a resource that's now almost as important as food, housing and water might (from a European perspective) need some kind of legislation to ensure availability even for those who live at the wrong end of the water tube. How this is ensured, without it just being an excuse to fatten telco execs and shareholders, is a problem. I'm quite sure that the proposed bit tax is one of the worst ways to try to fix this.
Enforced peering might be a better solution, but some of the biggest players are going to do what they can to stop that, because it cuts into their revenue stream and promotes competition by rewarding small players instead of monopolies and oligopolies.
Actually with Spain now saying there needs to be tighter Eurozone integration, it looks like Germany will finally take over Europe.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'd never pay a U.N. based tax, and I'd make damn sure no US politicians who were stupid enough to suggest that the US become a signatory of this proposed amendment ever gets reelected. I'm pretty sure most other US citizens feel the same way. We're quite sensitive about the whole taxation without representation thing.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
While I understand that telcos are money-grubbing little fuckers who would sell their own family for a plug nickel, I am honestly baffled at how frequently this 'zOMG high-bandwidth sites are terrifying parasites who are getting a free ride!!!' comes up, and even seems to be treated as reasonable.
It's not hard: For Company A and Customer B to exchange data across the magic intertubes, Company A is paying(probably rather a lot, albeit at favorable per-megabyte rates) for upstream bandwidth and Customer B is paying (probably rather less; but at usurious per-megabyte rates) for downstream bandwidth. There isn't any magic free-riding going on. In fact, by offering attractive and data-heavy services, Company A is doing ISPs a favor; by making their otherwise rather unexciting product highly desirable to Customer B.
I can understand that there might be occasional spats about peering between the big backbone guys; but the claim that internet companies are somehow 'free-riding' on the poor, downtrodden ISPs is laughably absurd. They certainly don't get their upstream pipes for free, and their customers definitely pay for the connection that they use to download. I have to wonder what color the sky is in the world of ISPs who have the temerity to attack their greatest benefactors, the people who provide stuff that the public wants so much that they'll buy bandwidth to get it....
Exactly. The mechanism is not the loophole, but the abuse is.
Transferring your money to a different part of the same company? That shouldn't be taxed.
Your company's expenses were the same as its income, so you had no profits? That shouldn't be taxed.
Most of your profits are made in a country with low tax rates? That should be taxed, but only at the low rate.
Put them together with a hefty helping of accounting mayonnaise, and you have a Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich arrangement, a fully-legal loophole. Properly pulling it off requires at least four companies in three nations, so it's not something the average person can do in its entirety.
I personally, however, have made use of several of the provisions that make it work, so I won't claim I'm against any single part. I've transferred money to (and from) a business of my own, being happy not to face taxes on every transfer. I've moved money to a country with practically no taxes, because I was living there.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
upside
An upside? You submit yourself to going along with this like cattle when there is no reason. All that it takes is for you to disagree. That is all. But you sit here, nod your head, and say, "Well, maybe it's not so bad," as you have your anus pummeled by politicians in every facet of life. YOU are the reason that stuff like this is ever passed.
Think twice...if you're even capable of that.
Often it's more a case that a tax exemption was created to cover a particular (reasonable) case but actually ends up including people who probably weren't intended to be included. It's a "loophole" when the non-intended beneficiaries use the tax exemption.
Of course, it also goes the other way. Extra taxes are created to catch some people who are "unnecessarily benefiting" but also end up hitting those who didn't deserve it.
I'm not sure there's a simple solution to any of this but politicians seem to delight in making systems complicated and "the people" seem to demand that the politicians make it more complicated[1]
My requirement for a fair system (and the UK tax system isn't fair under this model) is that the tax rate on X should be a monotonically increasing function of the size of X. e.g. if we're talking about income tax then the rate of income tax for someone earning X should always be less than or equal to someone earning X+Y for all positive values of Y
[1] For example, in the UK we have something called child benefit that is paid to the mother of every child. This was an untaxed, non-means tested benefit. The public (the daily wail) complained that it wasn't fair that someone earning 50000 a year should be getting this allowance so now it's become means tested. But despite the fact that we have individual taxation in the UK the father (husband?) is taxed if his income is too high even though it goes to the mother. Also we have the situation where a couple each earning 50000 (or whatever the limit is) still get child benefit while a family where one earns 60000 and the other earns 5000 don't get it.
So we've gone from a benefit that was near universally claimed, hard to defraud and easy to understand to something that is possible to defraud, that defrauding can be innocent (especially in the case of estranged couples where each may assume that the other is dealing with it or may deliberately engineer things to try and drop the other party in it), and difficult to know whether you are entitled or not, especially if your income is very variable.
If there was a politician with an IQ in positive figures then they'd have just put a penny on the higher rate of tax. 15 or 20 years later when the next generation is along they can also rinse, lather and repeat.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
And yet it's still the best option. No seriously though...I'm not saying this as "I AM AN AMURICAN" but moreso as...look at the shit the rest of your countries do with it. We have certainly fallen a long way, but the freedom of speech is still the most sacred right here and that affects things in a way that is very beneficial to the internet...even if we do fuck up sometimes. The thing is...our fuck ups seem small in comparison to the things that the nations of the UN would want to do. As the GP said...they tend to err toward censorship and the one thing I can still be proud of my country for is that they have an almost mindlessly addicted devotion to free speech.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
The UN is no longer the bastion of freedom it never was anyhow.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
IP and in Intellectual Property.
If the REcord companies claim that song is worth trillions in a law suit, ASK them where the Back taxes are on those Trillions. Software,Music,Movies,Books. Tax the stated "value" of them.
This fixes two things. 1 - Added revenue for the EU. 2 - stops ridiculousness in claims for Copyright Infringement. The company cant dare to claim $6500.00 per share of a song if they will be taxed at the new rate for it. Suddenly it fixes a legal and a financial problem overnight. They can stop paying Taxes on a piece of I.P. as soon as they release it as public domain. So old abandonware games, Old music music and old movies, will get released and not horded for no reason.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The UN is looking for a source of funding other than the US Government, because if the US Government pulled out of the UN it would go bankrupt and implode financially.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
The answer to your first question is ISP. They charge you, you pay. pretty simple really.
Wtf are the taxes for?
where is it written in the 2 leaked document sourcing TFA that they're planning to ask for taxes on data ?? couldn't find it...
As covered here a week ago, opposition to UN control of the Internet is one of the few areas where American politicians agree, and I expect that without them it's DOA.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Indeed. The internet should be neither taxed nor subsidized.
Of course, if they do try and implement this bullsh*t, I imagine the IT network guys will be back in demand. Private networks = no taxation (unless they're dumb enough to think they'll make it inside my house to install a meter on my LAN), and you can extend private networks fairly far...
I am John Hurt.
Subsidizing something means you are taxing A and giving the money to B.
Now it's easy to pick candidates for that, but in the long run governments generally do a bad job at picking targets to tax, and targets to subsidize.
Part of the problem is that once a subsidy is put in place a constituency is created making it difficult to remove. In the US for example we subsidize tobacco growers. The very idea is of course abhorrent, but the political system is just not efficient.
I pay for my connection. Facebook, et al pay for their connection. Shouldn't be anything besides this.
The problem is who pays the middle man who connects you and Facebook?
In particular, international cables aren't exactly cheap, and someone has to foot the bill.
Someone already does. When the traffics are materially different -- which happens frequently -- peering agreements put a price tag on the difference. This holds for voice and data. Someone gets charged for it, directly if or indirectly.
There is no such thing as a money drain in this arena: the costs are passed down to hosts and end-users, and the pipes as a whole, including international pipes, are widely profitable...
I'd be very hard pressed to shed a tear for US and EU oligopoles who are fighting their commoditization. Telecoms, in case it needs reminding, is one of if not the most profitable industries in history. This already held in the 19th century. Their lavish profits are shrinking of late? They can cry me a river.
"The internet should be neither taxed nor subsidized." Just out of curiosity, how do you think the internet gets paid for? Does it just happen spontaneously?