Think of it on the flipside. If I make a website, I don’t control who accesses it, and if I run ads or something, figuring out where that revenue is coming from is quite difficult. It can be done, but if I have to pay taxes to a hundred different countries, that’s quite the burden.
I don’t know how DSTs work in practice, but ideally we’d just discourage ads in general. Paying taxes on actual transactions (sub fees and whatnot) is easy, and ads suck.
These taxes usually have minimum revenue requirements that smaller players wouldn’t meet. Canada’s DST requires at least $20m in Canadian digital services revenue and €750m in global revenue.
It’s actually pretty easy to know which country an IP belongs to. ARIN, RIPE, etc all keep public databases tracking what ASN blocks are allocated to each country.
Think of it on the flipside. If I make a website, I don’t control who accesses it, and if I run ads or something, figuring out where that revenue is coming from is quite difficult. It can be done, but if I have to pay taxes to a hundred different countries, that’s quite the burden.
I don’t know how DSTs work in practice, but ideally we’d just discourage ads in general. Paying taxes on actual transactions (sub fees and whatnot) is easy, and ads suck.
Since all countries have long traditions in requiring that from a business, it doesn’t matter if it’s difficult or not.
It den essentially requires user tracking, no? Or some complex IP-based guesswork?
Maybe it’s tractable for larger businesses, I’m more thinking of smaller players who don’t have billions in revenue.
These taxes usually have minimum revenue requirements that smaller players wouldn’t meet. Canada’s DST requires at least $20m in Canadian digital services revenue and €750m in global revenue.
Is that pretty consistent? There are dozens of countries with laws like this.
The OECD has been working on an agreement that will probably include standards, but Canada and other countries got tired of waiting.
It’s actually pretty easy to know which country an IP belongs to. ARIN, RIPE, etc all keep public databases tracking what ASN blocks are allocated to each country.
You think you can ignore laws just because you are small?
I think the laws should be designed to not be overly burdensome on companies of any size.