United Nations May Tax the Internet-Complaints Abound

The UN is contemplating imposing an Internet tax targeting the biggest Web content suppliers, including Netflix, Google, Apple and Facebook that would destroy their abilities to reach users in developing countries.

The European proposal, offered for discussion in a December meeting of a U.N. Agency called the International Telecommunication Union, would modify a pre-existing treaty by demanding expensive fees on the largest websites as well as their network providers for delivering content to non-U.S. Users, according to documents that were recently leaked-perhaps even more disturbing than taxing the Internet is the fact that these negotiations are often done in secret and therefore never realized by the public until they are enacted.

The leaked documents re-iterate concerns raised by the Obama administration and Republican members of Congress last week about how secretive modifications at the ITU to global treaties could lead to a dangerous re-structuring of the Internet infrastructure and permit foreign regimes to control and record citizens Internet usage.

“It’s intensely worrisome,” Sally Shipman Wentworth, senior manager for government policy at the Internet Society. “It could create a huge amount of legal and public unrest.”

Developing nations “could effectively be cut off from the Internet,” asserts Robert Pepper, an ex-policy chief at the United States FCC. It “could have a large number of terribly negative, unintentional consequences.”

The leaked documents were posted by WCITLeaks, which was developed by 2 policy researchers at the free-market Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Robert McDowell, an FCC member who wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal last February titled “The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom,” alluded to the ETNO’s suggested Web taxes during last week’s congressional hearing.

The ITU’s process has raised alarm because most of it is conducted in secret.

“Not all countries like open, transparent process,” asserts Pepper, alluding to the ITU’s members. “This is a huge problem.”

Do you think the Internet should be taxed, even if it affects the availability for users in developing nations? Tell us your opinion, and if you are facing IRS tax problems visit our website to learn more about how JG Tax Group can solve them.