Re: Future of fax?

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4 total messages Started by Rick McCormack Mon, 06 Apr 1992 16:48

#246

Author: Rick McCormack
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1992 16:48

29 lines
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After reading the views on whether FAX will last, or be supplanted/replaced by
other technologies based on computers and telephones, I thought I would just
add to the discussion the following.

In British Columbia, a Canadian province on the west coast (Pacific Ocean-side)
the government sees FAX as a "handy source of revenue" (quotes are mine!). In
the latest budget for the province, the government has started charging sales
tax on FAX transmissions. Obviously, this tax must be collected by the
telephone company, who inadvertently become tax collectors thru their
accounting process.

Surely, this must add substantially to the cost of teltephone services, since
the sorftware must be written to catch these espenses and add the tax to our
bills, and then report on the amount collected, and then adjust accounts
receivable and payable for this amount, and then submit payment, etc.

So, we users will receive a double hit--tax and increased operating costs.  I
am sure other governments must alos be studying this type of revenue grab, so
the question becomes: will increasing costs of FAXing spur development of
alternatives, or will governments be only too glad to grab money from the
alternatives as they become successful? (Hard question? NOT!)
--
 _________________________________________________________
| IMAGISTICS Business Theatre Technology | Rick McCormack |
|  Interactive   Effective   Compelling  | Vancouver,  BC |
|________________________________________|________________|
|  UseNet: Rick_McCormack@mindlink.uucp  |  A O-L: Rique  |
|_________________________________________________________|
.

Re: Future of fax?

#250

Author: Keith S. Freedman
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1992 15:30

23 lines
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In article 11276@mindlink.bc.ca, Rick_McCormack@mindlink.bc.ca (Rick McCormack) writes:
>
>In British Columbia, a Canadian province on the west coast (Pacific Ocean-side)
>the government sees FAX as a "handy source of revenue" (quotes are mine!). In
>the latest budget for the province, the government has started charging sales
>tax on FAX transmissions. Obviously, this tax must be collected by the
>telephone company, who inadvertently become tax collectors thru their
>accounting process.
>
It would seem that it is acceptable to charge a tax on fax transmissions if a company
is charging someone to do the transmission for them, but this would be a simple sales
tax.
Otherwise, it would make sense to just read the document over the phone to someone,
unless there are graphics in the document.

I believe there has been some effort on behalf of the United States government to
try to tax electronic data transfers of any kind (i.e. modem use, etc.).  This has been
met with great resistance and they have not YET been successful.

---
Keith Freedman
Los Alamos National Laboratory
freedman@ilmen.lanl.gov

Re: Future of fax?

#265

Author: Terry Jones
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1992 17:03

20 lines
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>In British Columbia, a Canadian province on the west coast (Pacific Ocean-side)
>the government sees FAX as a "handy source of revenue" (quotes are mine!). In
>the latest budget for the province, the government has started charging sales
>tax on FAX transmissions. 

How exactly do they differentiate between a fax call and a voice call? I 
can see this being done on those fax services that offer lower rates
for fax calls only that some of the phone companies provide but I can't exactly
see how they are going to identify about 95% of the fax calls that are on
plain voice lines?

>Obviously, this tax must be collected by the
>telephone company, who inadvertently become tax collectors thru their
>accounting process.

Every retailer in Canada is already the government tax collector with
the Goods and Services Tax and the phone company has already been
charging GST on regular service. WHats new here?

tj

Re: Future of fax?

#276

Author: Mark Witczak
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1992 14:51

11 lines
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|>How exactly do they differentiate between a fax call and a voice call?
writes tj@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Terry Jones).

well it's quite simple, in fact the phone company has had the technology for
years, the listen for a carrier of 2600 KHz (or something in that area).  In 
the past they used this information to turn off full duplex on fone lines 
because the lag time for long distance comm. would screw up transmission.  
Lately, there's a controversy over BBS's paying business rates because they
charge their users, the Ma Bell would use this listening in such a case.

mark

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