-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03102801aff48a1390fc@[207.167.93.63]>, on 07/17/97 at 07:54 PM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
At 7:36 PM -0700 7/17/97, Mac Norton wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Tim May wrote:
Taxes are already essentially uncollectable, even in interstate transactions, so the moves by Summers and Magaziner are truly token gestures.
Uh, Tim, corporate and personal income taxes are still rather well collectible, and that my be the reason the federal gov't doesn't worry too much about taxing the Net. State, and even more so local, gov'ts do not have the same collectibility advantage. And the locals are often revenue-starved and
I meant that taxes are essentially uncollectable for interstate transactions like mail order purchases.
I buy several thousand dollars worth of stuff each year by mail order, and only a few hundred bucks worth of it has been taxable.
My state, California thinks I should either send them a check for 8.25% of all that I have purchased, or that the vendors in New Hampshire, Ohio, etc. should send them such a check....we all ignore this notion, and there is little to be done. It is this sort of "tax arbitrage" I was drawing a very real parallel to.
Most "tax the Net" talk I hear about is about taxing Net commerce (as opposed to, say, placing a per minute tariff on Net connections). Hence, my point.
I wasn't referring to either corporate or personal income taxes, which have little or nothing to do with the Net.
Actually with some "creative" accounting one can make use of the net to cirumvent large amount of corporate & personal income tax. :) It is quite possible to set up virtual corporations who's complete bussines is done over the wire. While some setions of industry can benifit from this more than others I see in the future a large section of the revenue stream migrating offshore to various taxhavens beyoned the reach of the little piggies in DC. :) - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM87iAI9Co1n+aLhhAQFlwAQAkYzP3uqoGIER52sN4tTENFMR2tgO57Sa DEGTJk90SXcrv4uKRxBLI9vmQcEykwz2u2nBbX+Upq4Hat5gNYNK+OYAt+/4yR2o LDLcA9aChnxxVoM6oC2GEm18hm9M2jkShy5umaIwWkKQr1hd0RiZ7j0QxJsy0net oZKzHdRUsm4= =XErr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----