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Net Papa: Global Internet Taxes Inevitable
(09/09/97; 12:00 p.m. EDT)
By Douglas Hayward, TechWire
GENEVA -- Internet taxes are inevitable, according to the man dubbed
the "Father of the Net." The only way to avoid global chaos is to
create an international agreement on how to do it, added Vint Cerf at
a meeting of the Internet Society here. Cerf co-developed the
TCP/IP[LINK] protocol on which all Web and Net transaction depend.
...Taxation of the Internet, also called "bit taxes," must be well
planned, Cerf said. "And it must also be thought through on a global
scale -- not parochially," he said. In the United States. alone, there
are 30,000 taxing authorities that might be interested in taxing
transactions on the Internet, said Cerf, adding that right now, there
is no way to determine which of those authorities should have
jurisdiction over a particular transaction.
..."If something is becoming an infrastructure that is important for
people's daily lives, then governments will have the right to be
concerned about the public's safety and well-being," Cerf said. "When
you build roads, you make rules about how people are to behave on
these roads, in order to protect people." TW
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