back to article Group of 91 nations agree to continue not taxing cross-border data movement – for now

Five years of trade negotiations reached a milestone last Friday with 91 nations agreeing on new norms for e-commerce – among them extension of a moratorium on taxation of cross-border electronic transmissions. The moratorium matters because the term "electronic transmissions" describes almost everything that passes over the …

  1. heyrick Silver badge

    No such duty has ever actually been imposed.

    And I hope it never is. Borders don't exist online, that's a real world construct that's the remnants of ancient tribalism. On the internet, a server is a server.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No such duty has ever actually been imposed.

      Well, the genie is out of the bottle. There'll be a new set of protocols and the data packets will clock up your cross-border costs.

      CT (Carbon Tax, Climate Tax) protocol anyone?

      Its really ingenious.

      The origin of a server using the new protocol will be identified and taxed accordingly, so a server is not just a server anymore.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      Re: No such duty has ever actually been imposed.

      The US already taxes online purchases based on what state you live in, so the idea that "borders don't exist online" is already false. Been false for far longer than that, in fact, given China's Great Firewall.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No such duty has ever actually been imposed.

      > And I hope it never is. Borders don't exist online, that's a real world construct that's the remnants of ancient tribalism. On the internet, a server is a server.

      If would be "fun" when traffic sometime took different routes (i.e. due to IXP or ISP problems) and then particular traffic flows crossed borders when it usually did not, or crossed different borders than usual (so may different tax rate might apply)

      All fun to try and add to BGP configs lol

  2. Robin

    Happening already?

    In much the same way as the some % of your money goes to the government, you could argue that there's already some % of data transferred that's already being siphoned off to various governments via the snooping mechanisms /s

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Open Borders?

    That can't be allowed (if you are a MAGA supporter). Build that wall. It does not matter if it is physical or electronic. MAGA can't have all those illegal alien bits of information penetrating the USofA can it?

    All it would take to make the whole internet grind to a halt is for just one major traffic carrier to impose a per bit charge on data and the world would end up in a depression as everyone else does the same in retaliation.

    Social media would die almost over night. Oh wait... that is a good thing isn't it? Given the drivel and hate that gets posted there every hour of every day of every week?

    OTOH, tax collection across borders would see all sorts of [cough][cough] fees added that would be many times the actual costs incurred. Are you listening IRS? HMRC?

    1. DS999 Silver badge

      Re: Open Borders?

      They'd like to have a Great Firewall to protect them from hackers. If Trump wins once they implement project 2025 and he has shut down or co-opted media inside the US to all become toadies like Fox News, he'll have to do something about allowing people to see the real news from the BBC and so forth. That'll be a project 2029 - somewhere after the first and most important item to Trump: "cancel the election on some sort of national security grounds and remain in office for life"

      And before any Trumpies object, Trump literally said last weekend at a Christian conference that they "only need to vote once and then will never need to vote again", because "everything will be fixed". Literally the only possible interpretation of that is that the US would be a dictatorship. Otherwise no matter what changes Trump made they'd have to vote again in 2028 to prevent someone else getting in office and undoing every change he made. He's telling them "vote just this once and you'll never need to vote again, because I'll be president-for-life and you'll have a Christian theocracy"

  4. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
    Meh

    Cross border data tax is one of those things that eventually will happen because a bunch of politicians sit around and say "probably a good idea". But no doubt it'll be a race to the bottom. Probably somewhere like Burkina Faso will say 0% and suddenly that's where everyone wants to put their shiny new data centre... for now.

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "the ongoing efforts to have Big Tech pay for the traffic it generates"

    I've always found this puzzling. I'm sure Big Tech has to pay for its internet connections. Did the vendors price them wrong? Very likely as they'd have been played off against each other and some salesman won with a low-ball bid.

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      No, the greedy bastards want to double dip. We already pay for our internet (some places rather more than others), and now they want Big Movie to pay as well, thus effectively getting paid twice for shifting around the same data.

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