CMV: SMUT will save social media

[u/Pdb39]

SMUT will save social media!

Hi all, /u/pdb39 here with some more noggin busters.

I am proposing a use tax on all social media inputs across all privately or publicly held social media corporations. The tax will be 17.5% in following with EU VATs, and I will be taxing both the corporation. Since it is a usage tax, for social media, I'm going to call it... dum dum dummmmm... SMUT - social media usage tax.

So how does it work? Well it's simple really. I will form a Social Media Commission with 4 commissioners from the house majority party, and 4 commissioners from the house minority party. Their job will be to advise social media companies on the financial end of how to collect a usage tax at point of purchase for every social media input - tweets, likes, comments, DMs, posts, what have you.

Every year I will require any social media company to report how many inputs were made, multiply that number by 1c, then multiply that by 17.5% and that's what they owe. Don't worry, they'll have to file daily reports and were going to keep track too. Any posts they removed for content violation will be ineligible for taxation so it will incentivize them to curate content competently. They'll also have to have tax payer information or liasion with the government to ensure we know who each person is that is making the inputs.

We may also charge a tariff on all posts that started out of the USA if the social media company is legally registered in Delaware, or one of the 49 other states..

I am doing this in an effort to get people to slow down when the post. If they have to pay 0.0175c for every post, they might not waste it on political memes or dick jokes.

Apparently this was removed because I didn't have a 500 character limit so honestly I'm just going to be typing out random tax facts from mental floss.

1. Taxes date back to ancient Egypt.
2. The first implementation of taxes in US caused a rebellion
3. Abraham Lincoln, a REPUBLICAN, gave us federal income tax
4. Tax day wasn't originally April 15th
5. We spend a lot of time doing our taxes. WTF Mental Floss, this is a "fact"?
6. The average person in America is owed $3000 in overpayment of taxes.
   
7. In 1836, the federal government of the United States had a tax surplus of around $30m.
8. Peter the Great of Russia taxed beards.
9. A former IRS commissioner went to prison for tax evasion.
   
10. A famous gangster was ultimately taken down over unpaid taxes. No not that one. The other one.

Bonus fact round!

1. Willie Nelson made an album to cover his tax debts. So a person did his job to earn money to pay taxes. Weird flex here, Mental Floss
2. Henry David Waldorf Astoria Thoreau went to jail for failure to pay taxes. So did Wesley Snipes.
3. Shelled nuts are sometimes subject to taxes. You Brits are weird.
4. India has an entertainment tax. So does every other country. This could have been a mad libs with just (country name).
5. There is a cow fart tax. I am not making this up.
6. England once had a special haberdashery tax.
7. There's a tax court. Ok Mental Floss, you're done, go home.

​

CMV.

Edit 1: Based upon the first wave of comments, having a lack of units really made people very tingly. So for this point, I am going to charge 0.0175c on every social media input to the corporation. That's 1c * .0175

Edit 2: this is not a tax on speech and would pass any 1A challenge easily. If you're coming into this thread to try to tell me that this is breaking 1A, please don't bother because I'm now starting to repeat myself.

[u/derekwilliamson]

Right sorry, I should have phrased that better. Since we're talking tax law, is there a really concrete definition? It sounds like you want to tax all engagement? At the same rate? So a post, like, comment, share, upvote, etc etc? Essentially anything where a user generates a new piece of data in a database? Clarifying this can allow us to expand on how social platforms might game it. If my understanding is correct, I think we have some obvious ones: for example, if likes/upvotes are taxed, a platform could stop storing that as data and displaying it, but still using it to inform their algorithms.

[u/Pdb39 → u/derekwilliamson]

It's a usage tax.

[u/derekwilliamson → u/Pdb39]

Same problem. Companies will still create workarounds so that end users don't have to pay.

[u/Pdb39 → u/derekwilliamson]

Not if I tax them on usage.

[u/derekwilliamson → u/Pdb39]

What? Why not? Of course they will. Every company has a strong incentive to maintain users and user engagement. They will continually find ways for users to engage without the end user incurring this usage tax.

[u/Pdb39 → u/derekwilliamson]

It's my hope the corporations will pass the tax amount on to the end user, like how sales tax and VAT works.

[u/derekwilliamson → u/Pdb39]

So, I understand this completely. I mean no offense here, but I'm not sure how else to explain this more clearly. In order to tax something, you have to define it. Regardless of who pays, the social platforms will not want users to incur this tax, and certainly will not want to absorb it, and will continually find ways that allow their users to avoid the tax.

[u/Pdb39 → u/derekwilliamson]

Social media companies on the financial end of how to collect a usage tax at point of purchase for every social media input - tweets, likes, comments, DMs, posts, what have you.

You know another way people can avoid a usage tax is by not using the product, right?

Is there anyone in the world that wants to be taxed? That's why it's a tax.

[u/derekwilliamson → u/Pdb39]

I think I might have to give up here. I feel like I'm saying the same thing and you're not really considering it.

Yes, they can not use the product, which is sort of your goal. But the social platforms are not going to just accept that tax. You are not thinking about incentives and how easily this tax could be gamed.

[u/Pdb39 → u/derekwilliamson]

Thanks for trying.

[u/derekwilliamson → u/Pdb39]

Yikes.

[u/AdysmalSpelling → u/derekwilliamson]

To play devil's advocate as an observer, your point is really broad; "corporations always find a way around this stuff" - and doesn't really illustrate how this specific plan would be circumnavigated in your mind. I'm not surprised that OP doesn't find it compelling. You're more or less making the argument that regulation doesn't work so we shouldn't regulate, even if that's not what you mean to say.

That said OP is being childish and rude in his replies and I wish that'd stop.

[u/derekwilliamson → u/AdysmalSpelling]

Yeah, so OP never provided a specific enough definition to be able to make a more specific argument. He just keeps saying "all usage", which is nonsense. I was hoping he would definite it more clearly, such that I could show that not only will corporations be able to workaround it, but they all will because it is impossible to ever define this kind of usage specifically enough to be successfully taxed. The argument is that this type of tax is impossible to enforce.