Slashdot Mirror
WTO Puts Internet Taxes on Hold
dafunn writes "CNet is reporting that the WTO is in agreement over extending the current Net tax ban for another 18 to 24 months. I don't know how long this will last, but it looks like temporary good news for e-commerce in general. The story is availible online. "
"...governments should not be over-regulating this brand-new commercial dimension..."
Why? Because they just don't understand it.
first they got rid of duty free, then this, what next? (france is still cheaper to buy mucho booze from tho)
Excuse me but isn't this obvious? It's called the World *Trade* Organization, not the World *Lets Get ourselves Taxed* organization.
Taxes raise the price of goods without putting any money in profit form into the pockets of the seller. Raising the price without raising the profit is something I would think that people interested in "trade" would be clearly against.
I was thinking about writing a totally paranoid rant about the WTO and inserting it here, but I figure I'll pass because we've probably already seen most of this stuff. Just IMHO as an organization, you've got to be pretty evil to get a super-apathetic American public so pissed off as to go into the streets and protest in those numbers.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Ultimately, companies want the WTO to permanently eliminate customs tariffs..
I am not a student of economics so if someone could enlighten me: If the goal of WTO is to get rid of tariffs and import/export taxes which will result in increased trade among the nations, why is it such a bad thing?
The problem with letting governments (be they National, (US) State, or local have the right to tax Internet commerce in at all is that it makes them think they have a right to tax Internet commerce in any fashion they want to. And historically, governments are much more reluctant to give up taxes than they are to raise them.
Besides it is difficult to determine just what to tax. What is the basis for determining who gets the tax? The location of the server hosting a selling company? The location of the company's HQ? The location of the factory/warehouse the sold product is coming from? The buyer's location (in all his possible permutations)? The thought that I could be taxed buy multiple governments scares me.
Mike Eckardt meckardt@yahoo.spam.com
Does this mean that my P0RN has been deregulated? Now all nations in every continent belonging to the WTO can have a fair shot at exporting their P0RN. Hmm. I wonder if the US porn industry would support a tariff on overseas electronic commerce (hard to enforce). The US industry could advocate sanctions cause they use child labor.
Instead, the reasons are almost unanimously to continue to entice and encourage more people to use the internet for purchases. Once they are satisfied that Internet purchases have become a way-of-life, as ingrained as handing a credit card over for every purchase at the local convenience store, the taxes will be ushered forth by a rush of oinking pigs, eager to pillage your pocket on every transaction.
Yes, there are various reasons for and against taxing Internet transactions, but I'm speaking only to the reasoning behind the current hype over not taxing. It's temporary -- and it is for the best interest of all governments. Don't be lulled into believing that they really are interested in simple free-trade and uninhibited capitalism and entrepreneurship.
Proposed delays are in the best interest of those who wish taxing (even heavy taxing) of the Internet.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Ohhh, thank you WTO, that was generous of you.
I'm glad that a governing body that has no right at all to tell ANY of us what to do (and was not voted in by us) has decided to be nice for a little while. I mean they could decide to charge a %50 tax on E-commerce and what could we do about it? Nothing, we are just little serfs.
I'd like to see the US just say "fuck off" to the UN, WTO, and any other pseudo-government that decides it knows how to run a country better than said country's government. None of these orgs have the US's best interest in mind, nor were they delegated by a democratic vote, so why the hell would we take these idiots seriously?
I have a feeling these riots are just the tip of the iceberg. Soverign countries are not going to take kindly to some "world government" telling them what to do.
Finkployd
Raising the price without raising the profit is something I would think that people interested in "trade" would be clearly against
Maybe in the first world. If you are a delegate from the third world you may be interested in tarrifs. Since you can't tax your own people enough to support your government you may have to rely on taxing imports to generate revenue.
On a similar note, we in the first world had to experience the unfair labor laws, child exploitation, and unsanitary and downright lifethreatening work environments as we navigated the industrial revolution. Now that we find ourselves navigating the information revolution we (President Clinton, the Seattle protesters, silent first-world citizens nodding in affirmation) believe that we can impose labor standards on these developing countries despite their cost of implemenation. Why would we think another country must implement our standards and not have to go through the same growing pains we had to in order to get to where we are?
Finally...
you've got to be pretty evil to get a super-apathetic American public so pissed off as to go into the streets and protest in those numbers.
It's not an apathetic public that is protesting. You have a very organized protest that has been in the making for months. They annouced their objectives months ago, and Seattle has no one to blame except themselves for the crisis. They could have planned better. Still, the AFL-CIO is helping to organize the protesters, and why not? Labor standards (read socialism) is their goal. If they can export their beliefs perhaps they can have a voice in the rule of government which adopt those beliefs.(NY Times) include the Sierra Club, United Steelworkers of America, and various smaller groups.
They are definitely a well-organized group with a self-serving message to be heard.
Why should the internet be any different?
It shouldn't, and, as far as I know, it isn't.
Placing an order over the Internet is treated exactly the same way as any other mail order transaction. If I purchase something from outside my state, there is no sales tax. When I buy my TRGPro in January, I'll have to pay sales tax since they are in my state. And I'll have to pay that sales tax regardless of whether I phone my order in, drive the two blocks down the street to pick it up in person, or place my order through the web.
When you get right down to it, e-commerce is nothing new. It's basically just mail-order, we've been doing it for years, I mean, how long ago did the first Sears & Roebuck catalog come out? Calling it e-commerce just means that you're using this "new fangled Internet thingie-jigger" to let the company know that you want them to send you something. It's still no different than picking up the phone and ordering something from the Sears catalog. Frankly, I can see no reasone whatsoever why they think there needs to be a special tax on the sale just because you place your order through a web form instead of a phone call. (No reason other than blatant governmental greed, anyway.)
In the short term (at least) this is obviously a Good Thing. Perhaps this points to slow waning of government power. Since the WTO is mostly a collective unit of corporations, this agreement shouldn't be suprising. It's more money that we'll have to spend at the Big Corporation's new e-commerce web site. It almosts reminds me of the situation in cryptonomicon, where the main characters basically discovered that the governments were "scared shitless" by the data vault because it could affect their ability to collect taxes. I'm not saying typical governments are going away, but this is a very small step twords a powershift in favor of corporations.
There are already taxes on e-commerce, so I'm not quite sure what they mean. If you buy a book from Chapters.ca, you have to pay GST like everyone else. If you order from Amazon.com, you can evade state sales taxes, but if you get it shipped to another country, you may have to pay duties (although I think most industrialised countries have eliminated tariffs on printed material.) Certainly other kinds of e-commerce have to live with national taxes or pay duties if they apply to the product they are selling.
There are no special taxes on services sold over the web, and software sold over the web is in a sort of limbo where there is no clear avenue to charge duties across borders.
I suspect the WTO is simply postponing working out exactly what regimes of taxation should and should work over the web between countries. This is as much a bad thing as a good one - it is no guarantee of a tax free nirvana online.
The WTO encourages free trade after a fashion by providing a mechanism for determining what kinds of laws and taxes are fair for international commerce and which ones aren't. The only power of enforcement they have available is that they can sanction tariffs against offending countries if the country doesn't agree to change its laws.
The WTO can't just amend national laws. Any country can pass any law they like, as long as they are willing to pay the price.
My problem is not with the idea of a global tribunal of that type, nor with the idea of free trade, nor even with the very limited enforcement mechanism available to them. However, what I consider fair rules and free trade differs substantially from what the WTO thinks, and there is no mechanism whereby I can influence WTO policy in that regard. That is what is truely wrong with the WTO.
Here's the real problem with the current prohibition on internet taxes: it is setting up another large transfer of power from local to national governments.
/.'ers) of the inherent advantages internet retailers have over current 'brick-and-mortar' establishments. Let them compete fairly.
h tm
Most local and state governments in the US are very dependent upon some form of sales tax. As has been stated in other posts to this article, the day will probably come when there will be taxes levied upon internet commerce. But you can be sure that when that happens (what, maybe 2-3 years from now?) that it will be the federal government that will have to authority to levy and collect these taxes. There may be some sort of system created to distribute these monies back to the individual states, but you can be assured that any such system will do more to place state government under the thumb of the feds.
I'm just as much in favor of lower taxes as the next guy, but I'm concerned that the current hysteria about keeping taxes off of internet commerce isn't really just becoming a temporary subsidy for internet retailers. Do they really need that tax break to become established? Come on now; we should all be aware (especially
It is a given that the internet is so new that any tax system put in place by any government has a chance of not being the best solution. Will this change in a few years when governments finally get around to it? Probably not.
Here's a link to a summary of the feelings of many of the states' governors about the current situation: http://www.nga.org/Releases/Letters/971010letter.
While you're there, browsing the rest of the nga.org site for more information, including reasonable proposals for dealing with this issue now. We just can't stick our heads in the sand about this issue because we enjoy the current tax-free shopping. Be aware, the internet *will not* remain tax-free. It's just a matter of time before the amount of money available for taxation can't be passed up by an government. The longer we wait to do something about this the more likely it is that the taxing authority will be the national government, with the corresponding transfer of power from local to national government.
Politicians finance their campaings with corporate money and in exchange they take care of corporate agenda's. The WTO is nothing but a multinationnal corporate mafia that has power OVER democraties.
I mean, this would be nice if The People could use it as an internationnal court to limit corporate misbehaviour but it turns out it's the other way around. The WTO is there so that corporations interests no longer need a govenment's aproval for anything they want to do.
The biggest INSULT to democraties is that the people who make decision at the WTO are chosen in totally arbitrary ways by the corporations themselves!!! Knowing this, can anyone say there is no Big Brother? This is even worse than an Imperialist state because it covers the whole damned planet. Ironically, who's "tax" money do you think is backing this up?
Without music, life would be an error.