more on EU to tax e-mail, text messages?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Levine <johnl () iecc com>
Date: May 30, 2006 12:37:35 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Re: [IP] more on EU to tax e-mail, text messages?

> Taxing text/SMS messages may be somewhat practical, but trying to do
> the same with e-mail will open a Pandora's box of problems.

Agreed.  Taxing SMS is easy since they're already metered (at least in
Europe where they're charged to the sender.)  Taxing email or any
other per-message e-mail charge is fundamentally impratical because
the cost of building the infrastructure to collect the charges would
cost far more than the revenue to be collected.  And as Lauren noted,
since e-mail has no security at all, there'd be a vast array of scams
to charge the tax other than the actual sender.

I have a well-known white paper on e-postage on my web site at
http://www.taugh.com that lays out the problems that doom e-postage in
more detail.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for  
Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.



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