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Will ICANN Add A Tax On Dot Coms?
from the they're-moving-in-that-direction dept
Late last year, we noted that ICANN was trying to slip in an extra $0.75/year/domain "tax" on all .net domain holders. At the time, we noted it was expected that they would expand this tax to other domains (despite the fact that a few years ago the group was slapped down in its attempt to charge an extra buck per domain, since the group has no authority to impose a tax). Apparently, not enough people got upset about the $0.75 issue, because ICANN has come back and quietly slipped a $2/year/domain tax on all .jobs and .travel domains. Next up may be .coms -- since the existing contract expires in 2007. Why does ICANN need all this extra money? That's not particularly clear. They're already getting much more money thanks to the controversial budget they got approved last year, that makes life difficult for smaller registrars. No wonder ICANN refused to open its books to its own board members and then kicked off the board members who simply wanted to see what they were doing with the public's money.
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money from who?
> Why does ICANN need all this extra money? That's not< br>> particularly clear. They're already getting much more
> money thanks to the controversial budget they got
> approved last year, that makes life difficult for smaller
> registrars.
Sorry, "getting much more money" from where? It is not as if ICANN is funded by DoC or anything.
Please read http://james.seng.sg/archives/2005/03/03/net_domain_name_tax.html
The bottomline is the money used to keep ICANN operating comes from domain names industry. Whether they collect the money from registrars, registries or on a per domain name basis, the money ultimately comes from the registrants - ie, from you and me.
So really, I see this as a move to be more open - we know exactly how much each registrations goes into supporting ICANN - then trying to pass on the costs to registries and registrars who then pass on the costs to us.
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Re: money from who?
Good points... Though, it's still not entirely clear why ICANN needs that much money.
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