Czech Republic proposes the highest digital tax rate in Europe

> The potential disparity between the value of personal data and what users receive in return creates space for governments to seek reimbursement on society’s behalf.

Is there a way to leverage competition to reduce this disparity instead of taxation? If there were proper competition, would there be a disparity?

The problem here isn't a lack of competition.

This happens because tech companies are well-equipped to siphon user data at massive scale and have been given the luxury of embedding these services into our daily lives without sufficiently educating the public around their business models. Ultimately, the public has very little control over what these companies do with this data, so there's a perverse mismatch of incentives here.

Tech companies are incentivized to collect user data and not explain how it's used. Tech companies are incentivized to pay lobbyists to discourage the government from placing a market value on data. The public doesn't have that kind of lobbying influence.

What would competition do in terms of how advertising companies benefit from user data?

I think the point is to start forcing companies into thinking sensitive user data is a liability that is taxed or worse if they do anything "nefarious" with that data (where nefarious could be whatever we think to put in that law).

So it's like asking for Coca-cola to "have competition" (which generally just creates more sugar soda brands) vs taxing sugar.

The way to tax the corporations is to have a minimum base rate they cannot escape and rules tightened on what qualifies to reduce their rate to that point.

the value of personal data can only be quantified if you can follow the path to its eventual sale. If they are not selling it but using to expand their own presence I have no issue. However buyers should be easy to identify along with the transaction value.

i just find it odd government and some who don't like what these companies put so much value into this data when the vast majority really assign it no value. people willfully give up so much and its not going to change because people want to be noticed more than they want to notice others

Why humans have AMT, but corporations don't?