Re: Microsoft revenue as tax income

[John Robert BEHRMAN <jbehrman@netropolis.net>]

  Thanks for your long post.
  
  This matter will turn on the tax-like character of Microsoft's revenue, especially the classic
  problem of collecting such revenue within and between sovereign states. In this regard, the
  European problem among nations, former empires even, will be much the same as the American problem
  among federated states.
  
  Having failed to deal with this in a regular fashion which both the European left and right have
  some experience of, unpatriotic politicians and undisciplined bureaucrats of a pretty middling
  sort are just improvising deals here and there. That is too bad. There is a very traditional and
  reliable way to deal with all of this through conventional "harmonization", "admiralty law", and
  Geneva Conventions, as such activity has been known for a long time.
  
  Ultimately, "royalty" will be very hard to collect within a single state without putting the
  police powers of the state at the disposal of "barons" like GATES or between states without
  engaging in or threatening war. This has happened time and again in this century, often, over coal
  and oil.
  
  We should have learned some hard lessons by now.
  
  Roberto Di Cosmo wrote:
  
  > I am quite pleased to see the idea of Microsoft revenues as tax income
  > in this mailing list: I thought that this was only of concern to non-US
  > citizens like europeans (at least superficially), but I am pretty happy
  > to be wrong.
  >
  > -Roberto Di Cosmo
  >
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