Why doesn’t it surprise me to hear that France is planning to begin taxing ad revenues that big names in the industry make most of user visits. The companies that will be taxed include Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and of course Facebook. Those names could bring in massive amounts of revenue that can be used to fund new projects.
The report states that the estimated revenues could mint as much as 20 Million Euros annually and all that from the US based Web giants. The money generated will be used for making the online experience better and of course for paying the artists who have their work scattered all across the Web. The idea is pretty appreciable given it would pay back those who make an effort to improve the quality of content online as well as providing even better content for the massive population.
The problem
The president of France has directed the Budget Minister Eric Woerth to work out a tax revenue model for online businesses. The move in itself might sound pretty useful for those who continue to be ripped off their rightful share as their content keeps circulating the Web with just their name getting all the fame. But there is a bigger problem at hand; it will kill innovation. Why so? Well the entire pace of new ideas jumping out will be slowed down if each entity online has to pay taxes on ads placed on their sites and the bigger the name gets, the more is the taxed amount. No matter how legal and justified it sounds, many businesses would barely feel the urge to step out of the cocoon because the taxes have to be paid on their brand .
What can be done instead to work out on a better business model that enables businesses to boom, consumers finding the right content and ends up providing much better and higher valued rewards for content creators. On the whole, I would absolutely agree with the idea of ensuring that artists (these are ones who usually suffer the most) do get rewarded for their that is downloaded extensively all over the Web.
[image with thanks]
