by Sapphire Magpie Ravenclaw

Created on: April 15, 2008   Last Updated: November 03, 2010

Taxing the internet would be neither fair nor practical. How would the government go about it? Charge yet another tax to another bill. Getting your telephone bill, or whichever way you receive the internet, and finding that it has increased so much because you now have to pay an "internet tax".

There is really no need to tax the internet, surely there are already certain taxes attached to internet services and utilities from people or companies buying domains or paying for services on which there is surely some tax added. If an internet tax is also included, surely this would do nothing but cause anger and frustration amongst those who end up paying more in taxes than for the actual goods or service they are using. Taxing the internet would also make finding those "great deals" a whole lot more difficult because companies would not be so capable of offering such savings and this would have a domino effect, causing people to buy less, more companies would ultimately be unsuccessful and companies as well as individual consumers would be out of pocket.

While taking the stance against taxing the internet, I do agree that a certain amount of monitoring should be carried out. It is not up to governments to control every action of those using the internet but governments, along with other organisations such as police, do have a duty to protect. The internet is an international phenomenon and can be extremely useful but it also lends itself to all manner of crime which ought to be tracked down and removed as far as is possible.

There will be those who don't consider that this monitoring could take place without there ultimately being some form of tax to pay for it but the government already bleeds us dry with taxes and taxes on taxes, there must surely be a way of sharing those current taxes in such a way that does allow for a certain amount of internet monitoring.

This would then, of course, raise the question of how much monitoring is to be acceptable. I don't think that every single person should be watched every minute of the day to find out what they are doing on the internet but I think certain websites should be monitored closely when there is a large risk of associated crime such as social networking sites. It would be impossible to monitor every single item which is created on the internet and it is for this reason that I do not think it is a generally good idea but I do think that attempting to monitor content which could be misused could be a step towards fighting the increasing internet crime.

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