---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 21:31:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon@cti02.citenet.net> To: e$@thumper.vmeng.com Subject: Re: The Taxing Problem
Few jurisdictions have begun to grapple with the issue, but they will, since many of them around the world are starved for revenues. And when they do, their tax authorities will discover the wonderland quality of the Internet. Two jurisdictions--the state of Florida and Tacoma, Wash.--recently tried to impose some level of taxation on e-commerce.
It is not everybody who say that their only wish is to get our keys for the sake of reading our love letters... [see later remark]
a Web site based in a low-tax jurisdiction. Distribution through the Internet could make the tax authority just another superfluous middleman.
Since when the tax man was a middleman?
problems. The very concept of "permanent establishment" in an international tax context as the basis for taxation is unworkable in the information age.
Basically, the law of causality starts to catch them up. Money is an expression of Man's Reason, expressed through it's productive abilities. Since taxing is always coercitive, it goes against individuals's best judgment. So, when there is nothing to physically coerce, they loose the ability to tax.
The time to explore Internet taxation issues is now--before electronic commerce really heats up, before the enormous economic potential it offers is lost in a welter of confusing, conflicting, and counterproductive tax policies.
"Economic Potential", Newspeak for "confiscation of production to finance other's peoples dreams". And they realize that if they don't clamp on it *now*, it'll go through their fingers like fine dry sand. "To explore the [...] issues": Newspeak for "to bully the Freedom-of-e-commerce groups", Newspeak for "to figure out a way to keep milking them without killing them".
Legislatures worldwide need to hear from the business community about the promise of electronic commerce, and about the need to protect it through wise and coordinated tax policies
How in the hell tax policies will "protect" the electronic commerce? Easy: just the way the Mafia used to "protect" commerces from burning up... Newspeak Master.
--policies that take into account the way the Internet really works.
Newspeak for "how to keep milking, or rather, keep bloodsucking them without killing them? And accessorily, how exactly does it work? In a totally non-private way. So, *naturally*, businesspersons will want to protect their privacy. But how in hell is the govt be able to do *any* monitoring of transactions if the transactions are encrypted? Duhhh... Note to Unicorn: how does 2+2 ? :-)
Maybe the business community needs to take the first step. Corporations should initiate the debate on how to create tax policies that do not cripple electronic commerce.
Peoples on Death Row are more lucky:: they don't get coaxed to weave their own hanging rope... Why concede them their screwed-up, leech mentality basic premises? In no way should we engage in this discussion. All we need to do is to expose our basic premises and say that the case rest.
There's only one way to move Internet commerce from here to there, and that's to engage in some forward-looking discussion.
I.e. there is only one way to make us swallow their Newspeak: to dazzle us with their fancy and rhetorics in order to make us abandon our basic premises. But will we? :-b --8== Ciao jfa