At the first full-scale meeting of the Global Business Dialogue on Electronic Commerce, the group's chairman, Thomas Middelhoff (CEO of Bertelsmann), issued a plea for global policies to deal with the worldwide medium of the Internet. During the Paris event, which brought together heads of several hundred companies and trade associations, consensus was reached on such matters as security, intellectual property rights, liability, protection of personal data, taxes and tariffs.
In the presence of government and international organization officials, including U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley and his Japanese and French counterparts, conference participant Gerald Levin (CEO of Time Warner), the group's representative for the Americas, argued for "self-regulation and technological solutions, wherever possible, over rigid or conflicting overregulation." In a prearranged rotation, Levin and Steve Case, chairman and CEO of AOL, become the new cochairmen of Global Business Dialogue, succeeding Middelhoff. A second conference is planned for next year.
The conference issued a recommendation that governments create a simple tax environment for e-business and maintain the current practice of the World Trade Organization of not imposing duties on electronic transactions. In cases in which regulation is believed necessary, such as the protection of minors, the group appealed for "carefully tailored" intervention.
U.S. Net Tax Moves Forward
Meanwhile in the U.S, the panel of politicians and corporate executives charged with examining Internet tax issues voted last week to go ahead with a system that would make it practical for Web businesses to collect state and local taxes. The main recommendation of the panel -- the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce -- was for state and local governments to simplify their various tax policies into a more uniform code that would make it easier for Web businesses to collect a tax.
The panel's next meeting is set for December in San Francisco, at which time it will listen to any proposals to make collecting Internet taxes simpler. Its report to Congress is due in the spring.
