back to article Bill Clinton killed off internet taxes, says Australian politician

Former Australian federal treasurer from the 1990s Peter Costello reckons the world passed up on a huge revenue source when it decided not to tax the Internet. Exactly how such a tax would have worked isn't explained, but in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, given as a soft profile to celebrate him assuming the role …

  1. Youngone Silver badge
    FAIL

    Idiot

    Costello is someone who really is as stupid as he looks.

    When I pay my ISP every month, I pay GST, they pay tax on the profit they make for supplying me the service.

    What else does he want? F&#@wit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Idiot

      Presumably sales tax to make up for the revenue lost to states from people buying stuff on the internet which avoids it (not including the further loss of sales/property tax when internet based businesses that didn't bear those costs were able to undercut local businesses and cause them to eventually close)

      Not saying 'taxing the internet' would be a good thing, but it is pretty damn obvious no one is talking about taxing this on the ISP level. If you pay a few bucks a month in taxes on whatever you pay your ISP, even a year's worth doesn't make up for the sales tax lost if you buy your new $1000 TV through Amazon and pay no sales tax.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Idiot

        Order direct from China. Skip VAT, import duty and what have you.

        1. DavCrav

          Re: Idiot

          "Order direct from China. Skip VAT, import duty and what have you."

          Yes, tax evasion for the little guy. At least if enough people start doing this government will be forced into sorting out the tax system for everyone introducing draconian legislation to curtail individual freedoms.

    2. Chairo

      Re: Idiot

      He wants what all governments/kings/clan leaders want since the beginning of time - more and more.

    3. PassiveSmoking

      Re: Idiot

      He's quite clearly a bean-counter and as the old saying goes they know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. How much revenue has the internet generated over the years that it may not have had it been taxed from the start?

    4. Yes Me Silver badge

      Re: Idiot

      Not just an idiot, but historically incorrect. It wasn't Clinton, although it was his administration - it was mainly Ira Magaziner, with political cover from Al Gore.

      And the motivation for no tax on Internet-mediated trade was explicitly to subsidise and encourage the beginning of on-line commerce, which is what Magaziner was hired for (after failing over health care reform).

      As others have said, ISPs have always paid their taxes. The whole point was to exempt the likes of Lands End and Sears, and their customers, when selling over the network. It was text book fiscal stimulation for a new industry.

      1. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: Idiot

        I never considered the question before, but wonder whether Land's End, Sears, and their respective customers paid sales or use tax on their mail order sales before they began accepting orders over the internet. If so, the states may have a legitimate gripe. If not, the complainers are simply exercising the normal response of government functionaries to anything new: regulate it and tax it, unless a sizable constituency thinks it immoral, for which the natural response is make it illegal (and possibly tax it as well).

  2. Number6

    Ask the people - if they want to pay tax on their internet purchases then I'm sure it would be possible to set up a site to allow them to do so. If they don't, then clearly will of the majority should be respected.

    1. DavCrav

      "Ask the people - if they want to pay tax on their internet purchases then I'm sure it would be possible to set up a site to allow them to do so. If they don't, then clearly will of the majority should be respected."

      Really? Do we also put this 'will of the majority' shit to other decisions? Bring back capital punishment? No income tax? You'd be surprised what you might find if you allowed a simple majority of people to vote every time. Good luck with your anarchy.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        This reminds me of the old democracy joke

        9 out of 10 people are in favor of gang rape

      2. Eddy Ito

        Good luck with your anarchy.

        You misunderstand anarchy or have confused it for ochlocracy.

        1. Swarthy

          anarchy confused for ochlocracy - That's easy to do: they look similar, and I'm not sure which scares me more.

          1. Eddy Ito

            @Swarthy

            They may look similar to you at first blush but they have little in common. Perhaps the biggest of these is you aren't free to walk away and ignore an ochlocracy. An ochlocracy is the equivalent of two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      People won't vote to be taxed

      But they would vote to have roads, schools, police and so on. That's theoretically why we elect a government, because leaving decisions like this up to a popular vote isn't going to work so well so we have people to make the hard decisions for us.

      At least that's the theory...mob rule might be better than the dysfunctional government we've got in the US these days.

      1. Jim 43

        Re: People won't vote to be taxed

        Sure they will. In the US we call them bond issues. I've seen communities in Texas push through a 58 million dollar bond issues so the local high school can get a football stadium. 120 million for a library on an amazingly expensive piece of river-front property? Sure, why the hell not.

        Every last one of those bond issues is a property tax increase.

  3. Mark 85
    Facepalm

    Should we take up a collection and start buying politicians a clue? The catch is, there's more politicians than what we probably could collect and they they'd turn around toss the clue into the trash.

  4. KR Caddis

    Thanks Bill!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hey Pete

    The only thing you were ever good at was:

    1. Over taxing your brain.

    2. Whingeing about being PM but never making an effort.

  6. Oengus
    FAIL

    Politicians and Maths don't mix

    Even a “fraction of a cent a year” Internet access tax, Costello reckons, would have “raised governments an unbelievable amount of money”.

    How does a fraction of a cent a year from every internet user in the country (population 24 million) raise even $1million?

    This is the typical sort of maths we see from our idiot politicians. (Unless he was thinking of an unbelievably small amount...)

    To think that he was the treasurer. No wonder we couldn't get our books to balance.

    1. Allan George Dyer

      Re: Politicians and Maths don't mix

      Would it be improper to suggest that 10000000/2 is a fraction?

      1. Efros
        Coat

        Re: Politicians and Maths don't mix

        "Would it be improper to suggest that 10000000/2 is a fraction?"

        No but it would be vulgar.

  7. RIBrsiq

    I believe there's a small typo in this article:

    "It would have been the easiest stupidest thing in the world, by the way, for governments around the world to have put a charge on the Internet"

    There! FTFY.

  8. frank ly

    Not really

    "Costello's also being reasonably fair because Australian television networks have to pay a license fee for the spectrum they use."

    That's because radio spectrum space is a common resource that can only be exclusively occupied. Copper and fibre cables are a 'private' resource that anybody can lay down and operate (assuming they have enough money and permission to dig up roads).

  9. Joe Werner Silver badge
    Trollface

    Be fair!

    It is written the internet was for porn - and that's true (read the BOFH...)

    Joke aside, all of the places where I lived do raise VAT also on internet purchases. If you order from abroad you pay import tax. I find this fair enough. I do not like paying taxes, but understand they are necessary... sort of.

    But this was not what this guy was talking about. And who will hinder Australia from raising an internet tax? I mean, you just take a fixed amount of money from everybody (or every household). If you do not want to pay you have to prove you have no means of accessing the 'net... Easy to do, but likely not popular :-p

    1. tom dial Silver badge

      Re: Be fair!

      In the US, most political discussion of taxation (and tax exemptions or reductions) has much less to do with rationally raising revenue to support government expenditures than with using it as a tool to promote what are thought desirable social goals, discourage behavior thought undesirable, reward those defined as underpaid and possibly virtuous, and punish those those considered overpaid and likely enough skirting the law or are at least unethical. Raising revenue for government operations is a result, not the goal.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Man's talking out of his arse, here in the UK we pay VAT on the connection and VAT on purchases and services (even on e-books) so is he imagining some kind of magic extra tax?

    And yes I know he's talking about AU - but if Clinton killed taxes on the internet why has everyone got taxes on the internet?

  11. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    It will happen, eventually

    Objectively, no government has ever wasted a tax opportunity, and I'm guessing governments all over the world are watching the billions being made in Internet transactions and are pinching themselves in frustration.

    This guy may be an excellent example of a dimwit, but I'm convinced that online retailers will, one day, have to contend with local taxes everywhere they sell.

    Steam already handles European tax on game sales, so it's not like it can't be done. What will have to happen (off the top of my head) is something like an API made available from a government site, where the vendor can query the API for the local tax to apply and integrate it into the sales process.

    It's just a question of time.

    1. tiggity Silver badge

      Re: It will happen, eventually

      The UK gov wastes lots of tax opportunities.

      Place your bets on how many big companies / high net worth individuals pay what would be a remotely fair amount of tax (the vast majority exploit most accounting tricks available)

      UK is aggressive on PAYE plebs such as myself, but does not even remotely exploit all opportunities to tax the multinationals, 1%ers.

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: It will happen, eventually

        @tiggity

        So is this an opportunity to tax their donors the big guy or an opportunity to tax the little guy?

  12. gnufrontier

    Dufus

    The world didn't miss anything. Those billions are still around just not in his dumb ass pockets.

    How do people as dumb as this guy get anywhere.

    1. hplasm
      Unhappy

      Re: Dufus

      "How do people as dumb as this guy get anywhere?"

      There's millions of the bastards, scratching each others stupid backs and egos.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dufus

      It's called the 'Old Boys Network' and includes 'The Revolving Door' appointments system.

  13. Magani
    Pint

    Corrections and Clarifications Column

    In a previous article, the sentence:

    "Vulture South notes that even with 20 million 'net accounts in Australia in 2016, a "fraction of a cent" a year access tax only amounts to a few million dollars annually."

    should have read:-

    "Vulture South notes that even with 20 million 'net accounts in Australia in 2016, a "fraction of a cent" a megabyte access tax amounts to a motza annually."

    "Pige" + "cat" + "ons"

    (although I doubt your average Polly goes in for Rebuses)

    1. David Roberts
      Coat

      Re: Corrections and Clarifications Column

      "Vulture South notes that even with 20 million 'net accounts in Australia in 2016, a "fraction of a cent" a megabyte access tax amounts to a motza annually."

      Leaving aside the dubious maths in the original calculation(unless Australia has only 10 cents to the dollar) this would leave the situation where users were being taxed to receive adverts unless they used ad blockers (which would obviously be illegal tax avoidance software).

      It also raises the interesting question on who would pay the tax on SPAM which seems to make up a large proportion of Internet traffic.

      Then again, the IRS might be an effective force if they realise the financial gains of taxing DDOS attacks.

  14. Tromos
    Facepalm

    Cost implications

    How much would it cost to send out a final demand for the payment of a fraction of a cent?

    1. tom dial Silver badge

      Re: Cost implications

      When I was involved around ten years ago with an application that produced 3,000 to 6,000 computer generated letters daily for mailing, we found the total cost to be between 50 cents and a dollar (US) per letter, including the reduced post office charge for ZIP presorted mail.

  15. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "In order to boast the British economy, I would tax all foreigners living abroad."

  16. Kumar2012
    Facepalm

    Typical government bureaucrat

    "world passed up on a huge revenue source when it decided not to tax the Internet." --- The idiot thinks that if they don't get the money then it doesn't exist, all it means is that whatever money governments around the world could have taken from people and squandered, was instead left in private citizens hand's to spend as they will doing far more good than any government ever will. So no the world did not lose anything, just some useless politicians didn't get their grubby hands on it.

  17. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    Coat

    Costello interview?

    Was he on first"?

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Costello interview?

      Who?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ah, Australian politicians. Any excuse to take their citizens more...

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