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Hungary's Plans For Internet Tax On Hold After Protests
An anonymous reader writes: When news broke last week that the Hungarian government was planning to tax internet traffic at a rate of about 62 cents per gigabyte, people on the internet were outraged. But it went beyond that: there were protests in the streets in Hungary, and the European Union warned against the plan. Now, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has put the plans on hold, saying, "This tax in its current form cannot be introduced." It's not completely dead — Orban has planned consultations over the next year to look for other ways to tax revenue generated over the internet.
I honestly can't say how much traffic I pass. I'm curious as to how they came up with the rate they did, and how that number looks in Euros rather than US Dollars...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's because government likes power, and money is basically instant power.
The problem, is that government types are often so blinded by things like this, that they fail to comprehend how that money works in the market-- they aren't economists, they are inept managers looking to bolster personal powers.
This happens in every government, of every kind.
Hungary sees the internet, (Fuck, EVERY country sees the internet this way!) and sees a system saturated in untapped "Taxation potential". They don't realize that one of the big reasons WHY the internet is a powerhouse of economic activity, is BECAUSE it is not regulated by local and foreign tax control.
Then you also have the "We can tax it, therefor we can regulate and control its use" power trippers. "I can control what people see, do, watch, and hear on the internet!" gives such people a very big boner indeed. Nothing says "I can shape your network use!" like a great big service fee, and nothing says "You will poison the well with my special sauce brand of misinformation when I tell you to!" like "Incentive tax breaks."
A free, open, untaxed, unregulated internet is the antithesis of these people's desires. that's why they refuse to be sensible about this, and are FOCUSED on getting that control.
If I transfer a file over a direct ethernet/cat5e connection, between two devices which happen to also be connected to the Internet, I presume that doesn't count as taxable data-transfer.
But it would be taxed if I sent it over the Internet, even if the data never went further than the ISP.
What if we create large mesh-networks, such that commercial ISPs are only necessary for connecting meshes? As the meshes grow, the amount of tax to be paid tends toward zero.