Saturday, August 16, 2008

A tax on intellectual property.

The dollar bills and whose value the United States is responsible for, bear the abbreviated motto "In God We Trust", "In God we trust". A more complete version would be "In God we trust that politicians do not circulate more dollars than the economy can support or, if they do, the United State's taxpayers have the willingness and ability to pay with taxes what it takes ". The above is the same for all other countries.

Now, and even if the private sector bears most of the initial losses of the financial crisis, it will end up being extraordinarily costly for the treasuries as well and, without a doubt, in many cases will exceed their current capacity. In this sense, some of the costs will have to be paid with more taxes or, in their absence, they will be paid with inflation, the tax on the poor.

Society has spent decades without analyzing taxation that adjusts to the new global realities and that interferes as little as possible with the recovery of the economy, so it may be timely to start reflecting on the subject. Any new tax proposal must also be legitimated on the basis of justice and rationality. In this sense I am circulating some ideas for your discussion and the following is one of them.

The tax on profits derived from monopolies created by intellectual properties.

Most or perhaps all intellectual property rights are granted to whoever runs the last part of a relay run with ingenuity, creativity and tenacious efforts by generations of human beings. The former runners allow the latter to cross the finish line victoriously and lift a finished idea, even if not necessarily started.

The particularity of this relay is that whoever expects to be running as the last reliever cannot be completely sure of it. Sometimes running the last part or any part can be easy; other times it can take a lot of team effort and cost millions. Society, in order to stimulate ingenuity, creativity and the effort required of all, in order to help the world progress, has decided to award the trophy of an intellectual property right to only the runner who crosses the finish line.

The problematic part of this social agreement is that all intellectual property rights create a right to a monopoly and that since it is exercised with little or no regulation, restriction or supervision, it means that it can be subject to over-exploitation.

Since every intellectual property right granted imposes on society the obligation to defend such right, in many ways, which costs a lot, the question that also remains to be answered is whether it would not have been better to use those resources for other purposes, for example finance others to run the relay.

I do not find logic or justice in charging a company that has been granted a monopoly of an intellectual property right, for something to which previous generations have contributed and in whose defense society must invest resources, the same tax rate on earnings that applies to a company that competes in the market without any kind of protection.

Therefore, I have proposed to study that the profits generated by the exploitation of an intellectual property right pay an additional tax on profits, of for example 20%. Those proceeds can go to reimburse society for the costs of defending intellectual properties and to help fund other runners in those relays of humanity to develop essential goods that can serve us all.