I wonder why we don’t see any kind of tax on advertising (or maybe we do?). It seems to me like a way to recoup some of the social cost of advertising. It also

I wonder why we don’t see any kind of tax on advertising (or maybe we do?). It seems to me like a way to recoup some of the social cost of advertising. It also seems like it could be popular with eg some European governments as a way to get companies like google and Facebook to pay some tax on the profits they make. If the tax were per estimated impression then it would encourage more accurate estimates of volume (or at least it could curb the inflation of the estimates) as companies offering advertising would be incentivised by taxation to keep estimates low, and by competition to keep estimates high. Perhaps instead there would be some kind of gdpr inspired tax on collecting unneeded information to cover the societal cost of breaches and leaks and tracking in general. A few reasons that we don’t see this: 1. It seems a slightly weird thing to tax. On the other hand, sugar taxes are becoming a thing in some places. 2. Elected governments may not want to piss off the media companies who they feel elected them. 3. Maybe people don’t care about advertising and so would feel like such a tax was for some hidden purpose. São Paulo (iirc) banned almost all public advertising. I wonder how the people there feel about it.