France is getting download tax for content providers (€0.055/GB)

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50308240

comrade1234

I tried playing the monster mash on YouTube tonight. It played two ads then started the song but the video had a weird ai avatar performing. It played for five seconds then started playing another ad. I'm just bitching....

elmer2

I would riot too.

2001zhaozhao

The dreaded cloud egress tax, except now it's actually a tax.

benoau

What an obtuse way to tax these services.

whatever1

Compression is tax evasion!

WarmWash

Can't wait to only be able to stream 240p

stephc_int13

This was a proposal, and it was rejected. Not an actual tax or law.

Retr0id

Wow. That's more than the cost of the storage space you'd be downloading onto.

indy

Reeks of desperation from a group of bureaucrats who are capable of nothing but taxing people

aucisson_masque

11 votes to 10… there was basically no one to vote for. Stop wasting your time on that, it’s going to get removed next time.

jedbrooke

Maybe this would at least have the silver lining of forcing website operators to not ship 100MB of bloated javascript mess and auto playing video

maelito

This tax is not well thought but we need to tax those companies that evade taxes. Let's be creative and strong.

baxtr

I wonder if this got solved anywhere yet: how do you get politicians that actually want to save money instead of raising taxes or creating new types of taxes? I understand that it’s way easier and quicker to do the latter instead of saving. That’s the reason they do it in the first place. I just wonder if there is a way to incentivize them to save instead. Maybe some country was successful at one point in time.

loeg

Europe never beating the allegations...

natas

This will severely undermine technological innovation and the development of new technologies.

zerozerotwo

This is going to well with the digital only ps5

majora2007

I actually like the idea of this, but with some restrictions (and wouldn't mind seeing it in the US). Yes, I know the costs are passed thru to consumers. Here's my thinking: 1. Limit who is charged based on how much bandwidth they consume / month. If it's over 1TB, the tax goes into affect. This helps small businesses. 2. If (1) can't work, we can do it based on income from French users above X / month. 3. Tax income must go towards infrastructure projects: Parks & Recs, Fiber buildouts, etc.

shoo

If the US were to follow this excellent idea to raise revenue, it could completely solve the federal budget deficit. A modest download tax of USD $2.07 per GB suffices. Estimate: - 134 million households - approx 80% of households subscribe to home broadband - approx 750 GB download per month per household - $2 trillion annual deficit - assumes no change in household behaviour in response to the new tax

abdullahkhalids

The stated reason is that physical business, when they use the country's infrastructure pay tax to contribute to the upkeep. But presumably, internet businesses, especially those based outside the country use the infrastructure but do not pay for the upkeep. This tax is supposed to address this issue. While the solution might not be optimal, how valid is the underlying problem? Can someone make genuine steelman arguments?