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How can you tax a global entity like the internet? Who has the right to levy such a tax? If the US government tried to tax me for using it I would ignore them, they have no jurisdiction here.

If Gordon Brown and his slimey cronies latched onto the idea UK ISPs would simply move offshore.

Thankfully, the internet is not goverment property, that's any government, and under English law it would not be legal for it to be taxed, Even under the shaky kind of law practiced in the USA it would be difficult for the government to find a legal justification for such a levy.

Given that a large part of the world's commerce relies on the net it would be a silly idea, and a very short sighted one, which is why this idea is so scarey, by now we should all have realised that you can't trust a politician not to make a mess of things.

You have to decide who the world wide web belongs to.

The USA? no

Europe? no

Great Britain? no

The truth is that it belongs to the people who pay for it and use it, that's 50,000,000 British people, 300,000,000 US citizens, many millions from the middle and far east, many millions more from Asia, Australasia, China, Japan, every corner of the globe.

How would you levy such a tax? would you add it to the monthly fee paid to the ISP? Would you add internet usage to the individual tax payer's income tax? would you tax by the hour or by the gigabyte? How would you measure it?

This sounds like an ill-thought out plan, so it can only have come from a politician with a politician's greedy eye and lack of a real understanding about what the interenet is and how it works.

The internet is a network of computers. it is my laptop in England, servers in every town on the planet, millions of laptops, desktops, Macs, Games consoles, mobile phones, and a global web of inter-connectivity.

What would a Goverment be expected to provide in return? nobody knows, perhaps the US government thinks it can control contant? Think again. All that would happen if they tried is that any internet related industry that happened to be based in the USA would re-locate to a more enlightened location, depriving the country of much employment and tax revenue at possibly the worst time in history for doing so.

An enlightened administration would ease the tax burden on it's citizens but sadly Enlightened Administration is somewhat of an Oxymoron, like 'military intelligence' 'honest politician' or 'Entertaining Tap dancer'

Learn more about this author, Jeff Dray.
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