Would taxing email reduce spam?

[Schadenfroh]

Say the federal government slaps a $.10 per email tax on each email sent and your ISP takes care of this by adding this to your bill each month.

Say all these people that allow spyware and trojans to exist on their PCs and dont do anything about it (who are SPAM zombies) suddenly get a bill from their ISP for about $500 at the end of the month, that might make them take thier PC in to get fixed and actually get a firewall / prevention, thus reducing the amount of infected machines on the net spamming viruses/trojans to other networks and reduce spam emails, would this not also reduce the internet traffic and allow more bandwidth because billions of emails that would normally be sent out are no longer sent out.

 

[akubi]

gmail filters all my spam away

 

[scorpmatt]

spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam! lovely spam and the wonderful spaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaammmm!

 

[oogabooga]

I don't think it would solve anything : but start padding the pockets of people.. i'm sure isp's will slap on a fee to handle your spam bills, etc etc. plus the people really making money by spamming will still find other ways to do it, or keep doing it this way : though there will be a cut in their profits.

 

[Safeway]

Yea, but think about Bank of America or eBay ... those companies would get taxed an incredible amount.

 

[Baked]

No. But killing the spammers will.

 

[tfinch2]

Have you ever worked at a place where they use e-mail? Tax bills for 10 cents each e-mail would be in the millions.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Safeway
Yea, but think about Bank of America or eBay ... those companies would get taxed an incredible amount.

Whiule the REAL spammers would stay offshore, where they already are and not pay.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Safeway
Yea, but think about Bank of America or eBay ... those companies would get taxed an incredible amount.

Naw, they'll just pass the costs onto us.

 

[Mo0o]

Can't tax foreign spammers

 

[scorpmatt]

Originally posted by: Safeway
Yea, but think about Bank of America or eBay ... those companies would get taxed an incredible amount.

you get charged the tax too, its a very sharp double edged sword

 

[otispunkmeyer]

sort it yourself

i tell thunderbird whats trash and i never see it again

 

[Safeway]

Taxing email is a ridiculous thought. How about we charge 10 cents per IM sent? Let's see - adding up all my logged conversations from the past 6-8 years yields ... $100,000+

 

[jjones]

Stupid idea, please never run for government office.

 

[Penth]

I read an idea years ago where it would cost money to send an email and if the recipient wanted it, you would get your money back. So correspondence email would be generally free, but spam would cost loads of money.

 

[suse920]

Originally posted by: jjones
Stupid idea, please never run for government office.

:thumbsup:

 

[Spacehead]

Would something like this be more reasonable? Tax senders of computer time.

 

[dighn]

it would probably kill spam, but also legit email along with it

 

[sixone]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: Safeway
Yea, but think about Bank of America or eBay ... those companies would get taxed an incredible amount.

Whiule the REAL spammers would stay offshore, where they already are and not pay.

True. Plus our very own government would give American businesses tax exemptions on bulk mailings, as they already do for snail mail, so there would be no incentive whatsoever to send less spam.

 

[funboy6942]

Originally posted by: Spacehead
Would something like this be more reasonable? Tax senders of computer time.

Christ arnt we taxed enough already??????????????
QFT about wanting to add more tax. Any kind of tax is bad its just going to make the government want more and more.

 

[her209]

No. No it wouldn't.

 

[Rock Hydra]

Who would get the money? Whoever owns the internet.
Nobody owns the internet. Nobody gets money.

But alright, assuming there is a tax. Instant messaging would become vastly more popular relatively quickly.
And I'm sure other means of communications would arise...in probably a fashion like private web forums

 

[DaveSimmons]

For zombie PCs they'd tax the PC owners instead of spammers, but I guess that's really a stupidity tax for getting infected