Comment by rileymat2
3 hours ago
I am not sure what the point of this is.
If they are exporting data for sale, we can tax the value they are selling it at. If they are using data to generate ad revenue, we can tax that.
If we want to enforce privacy standards, we can make liability laws around sharing that data with third parties; we can make it harder for users to consent to the sharing of data by making users decide and approve on a case by case basis.
There is so much to do before exotic schemes, for instance way less intrusive things like making it so privacy policies legally survive bankruptcy.
There's at least one possible point, which is where the income is taxed. If data is not considered valuable, the German branch of company X can send data to its Irish branch, and the profit realized in Ireland (with very low tax rate), while this value was generated in Germany but the German state gets no income. And if Ireland raises its tax rate, send it to another fiscal paradise.
Potentially, if data was accounted as valuable, the income would be accounted for where it is generated, each country gets its fair share, and tax avoidance gets harder.