It's not difficult to collect taxes on digital activities, especially when they run through a blockchain. The AI companies charge for AI using "tokens", which are essentially units of value based on the resources used. Some companies are now freaking out at how many tokens their workers are consuming and how much their AI usage is costing, and are trying to figure out how to reduce that cost.


One option would be to require that all AI tokens consumed in a country, must also have those tokens generated in the country (a token tariff!); then you could tax the power consumption.

The challenge of course is that you also want to remain competitive, meaning that if you tax the Agents, the companies will just 'offshore' the agents (what ever that means). I am sure that some sort of protections are coming, but probably very slowly.

My personal opinion is that consumption taxes in the US are too low, and income taxes are too high - balancing that is probably a good start. I think Bezos floated an idea of eliminating taxes on all income under $80K or some amount significantly higher than current levels. Adding in a 10% VAT and adjusting income tax brackets would shift the tax revenue sources a lot. Then layer in an asset tax on amounts over say $100M and you have a much more balanced tax policy...(perhaps 1% annually, with some ability to adjust - say taking the average amount during the past 3 years as the basis).

Lots of potential ideas...


tecmo
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