7 ms·

How would you calculate the FMV of milk.com?

greyface- 2y ago
What's the highest offer for it that you've rejected? That seems like a fair lower bound. (Not that I necessarily support a Georgist tax in this case, since it seems that your interest in the domain is noncommercial in nature)
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Wouldn't that allow random people to increase your tax on domains you obviously don't want to sell ? E.g. if you owned and actively used greyface-.com and I'd make an offer of 10 000$ just for the fun of it, either you literally give up your name (I eat the cost but that's a risk I could want to take) or you're stuck with a percent of that to pay every month/year even as nothing else changed for you.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > E.g. if you owned and actively used greyface-.com and I'd make an offer of 10 000$ just for the fun of it, either you literally give up your name (I eat the cost but that's a risk I could want to take) or you're stuck with a percent of that to pay every month/year even as nothing else changed for you. If you're willing to pay $10000 for it, even if only out of spite, then it's worth that much yeah. The domain is suddenly in more demand than it was, taking it out of circulation is a bigger imposition on society than it was before, so isn't it right that the tax on that goes up?
    - makeitdouble 2y ago
      I'm still not sure it works. If I end up paying for your domain after a malicious move I coukd as well try to milk it out and may recover my cost by burning through your brand image. If I actually got more from it than expected, I'd rince and repeat making people's life miserable. Same way if an attacker got tesla.com by pushing enough, they might extract more value from it than a flailing Tesla could, and the customer base would be worse for it. As a society I think we don't want to encourage adversarial pricing on taxes, the same way property tax isn't just based on raw demand (or even linked to it at all depending on the country) and has elements of controls to prevent too much gaming of it.
      - lmm 2y ago
        > If I end up paying for your domain after a malicious move I coukd as well try to milk it out and may recover my cost by burning through your brand image. If I actually got more from it than expected, I'd rince and repeat making people's life miserable. Same way if an attacker got tesla.com by pushing enough, they might extract more value from it than a flailing Tesla could, and the customer base would be worse for it. "Someone might get angry about this tax and do something malicious" is an argument you can make about any kind of tax. We already have to deal with people squatting domains, and we have laws about trademarks, libel and so on. A tax on valuable domains ought to reduce domain squatting (since it makes it harder to just hold a domain that you're not using, you'd be paying every year) and reduce the market price of domains, which would increase competition and be good for customers. If someone manages to make a viable business out of buying up domains whose owners have been lowballing their value to keep their taxes low, fair play to them, they'll be helping keep everyone honest and keep domains in circulation in the market (but notice that a business like that is only going to be viable if they can sell the domains on to someone who can actually use them pretty quickly, because every year that they're holding them in inventory they're paying the taxes themselves). > As a society I think we don't want to encourage adversarial pricing on taxes, the same way property tax isn't just based on raw demand (or even linked to it at all depending on the country) and has elements of controls to prevent too much gaming of it. The current property tax regime is exactly the kind of failure I want to avoid; those "controls" are what leads to all the gaming that locks up our property market and means young people have no hope of ever owning anything. A more raw market-based system would be fairer and more effective.
  - klipt 2y ago
    > I eat the cost but that's a risk I could want to take You also have to eat the increased tax going forward. Which could be spent on eg universal healthcare.
- danfuzz 2y ago
  I know of no truly serious offers for the domain, but why should that matter? I'm pretty sure residences aren't taxed based on un-accepted offers, for example.
  - lmm 2y ago
    Residences are taxed based on appraised market value; I think offers made can be taken into account on that? If not then they should be.
    - danfuzz 2y ago
      At least where I live (California US), that's not true. There are certain things which trigger a change in taxable value, but they're mostly only indirectly connected to appraised value. Un-accepted offers 100% definitely don't factor in and (for reasons already argued by others on this discussion) would probably cause more problems than they would solve if they _were_ taken into account.
      - lmm 2y ago
        California's property tax system is notoriously terrible and a significant contributor to the housing crisis in that state.
        danfuzz 2y ago
        You're probably thinking of Prop 13, which, no argument. But I don't think the fix is as straightforward as you imply. (TLDR the biggest problems are due to corporate landowners, not families who own a single dwelling.) Also, what jurisdiction are you aware of that takes un-accepted real estate offers into account for tax purposes?
        lmm 2y ago
        My background is Ireland, where there's a general requirement to self-assess an accurate value; you're not specifically required to take offers into account but you're not required to ignore them either, it's more of a "you should assess all the information available and come up with an accurate valuation" type law, with the specifics being left to interpretation. https://www.revenue.ie/en/property/local-property-tax/valuing-your-property/sources-for-valuing-your-property.aspx https://www.revenue.ie/en/property/local-property-tax/valuin... has a bit about the process.
lmm 2y ago
You'd have an assessor compare it against domains that had traded recently (someone else mentioned beer.com), perhaps ask interested buyers to give a quote.
- danfuzz 2y ago
  Are you proposing every domain name registrant pay for an annual appraisal, whether or not they are planning on selling?
  - lmm 2y ago
    No, I'm envisioning something like the property tax system - the state assessor tells you a number, you can accept that, informally discuss it with them, or make a formal appeal. Which, yes, might mean legal costs, but presumably only in cases where it was assessed to be worth a lot, in which case either you really are that wealthy and can afford the assessment, or you always have the option of ceding it to the state at the price they've assessed.
    - danfuzz 2y ago
      People pay registration fees every year for domains. How is what you propose different than registrars setting different fees for different domains? Or: What entity should be entitled to the tax, and why?
      - lmm 2y ago
        > How is what you propose different than registrars setting different fees for different domains? Under what I propose, people using or squatting a popular domain that lots of people want would pay more, and people using an obscure domain no-one cares about would pay less. That would be more equitable. > Or: What entity should be entitled to the tax, and why? It's a Pigovian tax, so it has a positive effect even if you burn the proceeds. In an imaginary ideal world I'd put them in a kind of sovereign wealth fund for all humanity, that every natural person was equally entitled to, because no-one owns the word "milk" and everyone on Earth (other than the one person who does get to use the domain) is equally deprived by not being able to use the domain for their own website. In practice, using it to run internet infrastructure or putting it into general UN/government coffers would be fine.

What's the highest offer for it that you've rejected? That seems like a fair lower bound. (Not that I necessarily support a Georgist tax in this case, since it seems that your interest in the domain is noncommercial in nature)

makeitdouble 2y ago
Wouldn't that allow random people to increase your tax on domains you obviously don't want to sell ? E.g. if you owned and actively used greyface-.com and I'd make an offer of 10 000$ just for the fun of it, either you literally give up your name (I eat the cost but that's a risk I could want to take) or you're stuck with a percent of that to pay every month/year even as nothing else changed for you.
- lmm 2y ago
  > E.g. if you owned and actively used greyface-.com and I'd make an offer of 10 000$ just for the fun of it, either you literally give up your name (I eat the cost but that's a risk I could want to take) or you're stuck with a percent of that to pay every month/year even as nothing else changed for you. If you're willing to pay $10000 for it, even if only out of spite, then it's worth that much yeah. The domain is suddenly in more demand than it was, taking it out of circulation is a bigger imposition on society than it was before, so isn't it right that the tax on that goes up?
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    I'm still not sure it works. If I end up paying for your domain after a malicious move I coukd as well try to milk it out and may recover my cost by burning through your brand image. If I actually got more from it than expected, I'd rince and repeat making people's life miserable. Same way if an attacker got tesla.com by pushing enough, they might extract more value from it than a flailing Tesla could, and the customer base would be worse for it. As a society I think we don't want to encourage adversarial pricing on taxes, the same way property tax isn't just based on raw demand (or even linked to it at all depending on the country) and has elements of controls to prevent too much gaming of it.
    - lmm 2y ago
      > If I end up paying for your domain after a malicious move I coukd as well try to milk it out and may recover my cost by burning through your brand image. If I actually got more from it than expected, I'd rince and repeat making people's life miserable. Same way if an attacker got tesla.com by pushing enough, they might extract more value from it than a flailing Tesla could, and the customer base would be worse for it. "Someone might get angry about this tax and do something malicious" is an argument you can make about any kind of tax. We already have to deal with people squatting domains, and we have laws about trademarks, libel and so on. A tax on valuable domains ought to reduce domain squatting (since it makes it harder to just hold a domain that you're not using, you'd be paying every year) and reduce the market price of domains, which would increase competition and be good for customers. If someone manages to make a viable business out of buying up domains whose owners have been lowballing their value to keep their taxes low, fair play to them, they'll be helping keep everyone honest and keep domains in circulation in the market (but notice that a business like that is only going to be viable if they can sell the domains on to someone who can actually use them pretty quickly, because every year that they're holding them in inventory they're paying the taxes themselves). > As a society I think we don't want to encourage adversarial pricing on taxes, the same way property tax isn't just based on raw demand (or even linked to it at all depending on the country) and has elements of controls to prevent too much gaming of it. The current property tax regime is exactly the kind of failure I want to avoid; those "controls" are what leads to all the gaming that locks up our property market and means young people have no hope of ever owning anything. A more raw market-based system would be fairer and more effective.
- klipt 2y ago
  > I eat the cost but that's a risk I could want to take You also have to eat the increased tax going forward. Which could be spent on eg universal healthcare.
danfuzz 2y ago
I know of no truly serious offers for the domain, but why should that matter? I'm pretty sure residences aren't taxed based on un-accepted offers, for example.
- lmm 2y ago
  Residences are taxed based on appraised market value; I think offers made can be taken into account on that? If not then they should be.
  - danfuzz 2y ago
    At least where I live (California US), that's not true. There are certain things which trigger a change in taxable value, but they're mostly only indirectly connected to appraised value. Un-accepted offers 100% definitely don't factor in and (for reasons already argued by others on this discussion) would probably cause more problems than they would solve if they _were_ taken into account.
    - lmm 2y ago
      California's property tax system is notoriously terrible and a significant contributor to the housing crisis in that state.
      - danfuzz 2y ago
        You're probably thinking of Prop 13, which, no argument. But I don't think the fix is as straightforward as you imply. (TLDR the biggest problems are due to corporate landowners, not families who own a single dwelling.) Also, what jurisdiction are you aware of that takes un-accepted real estate offers into account for tax purposes?
        lmm 2y ago
        My background is Ireland, where there's a general requirement to self-assess an accurate value; you're not specifically required to take offers into account but you're not required to ignore them either, it's more of a "you should assess all the information available and come up with an accurate valuation" type law, with the specifics being left to interpretation. https://www.revenue.ie/en/property/local-property-tax/valuing-your-property/sources-for-valuing-your-property.aspx https://www.revenue.ie/en/property/local-property-tax/valuin... has a bit about the process.

lmm 2y ago

You'd have an assessor compare it against domains that had traded recently (someone else mentioned beer.com), perhaps ask interested buyers to give a quote.

danfuzz 2y ago
Are you proposing every domain name registrant pay for an annual appraisal, whether or not they are planning on selling?
- lmm 2y ago
  No, I'm envisioning something like the property tax system - the state assessor tells you a number, you can accept that, informally discuss it with them, or make a formal appeal. Which, yes, might mean legal costs, but presumably only in cases where it was assessed to be worth a lot, in which case either you really are that wealthy and can afford the assessment, or you always have the option of ceding it to the state at the price they've assessed.
  - danfuzz 2y ago
    People pay registration fees every year for domains. How is what you propose different than registrars setting different fees for different domains? Or: What entity should be entitled to the tax, and why?
    - lmm 2y ago
      > How is what you propose different than registrars setting different fees for different domains? Under what I propose, people using or squatting a popular domain that lots of people want would pay more, and people using an obscure domain no-one cares about would pay less. That would be more equitable. > Or: What entity should be entitled to the tax, and why? It's a Pigovian tax, so it has a positive effect even if you burn the proceeds. In an imaginary ideal world I'd put them in a kind of sovereign wealth fund for all humanity, that every natural person was equally entitled to, because no-one owns the word "milk" and everyone on Earth (other than the one person who does get to use the domain) is equally deprived by not being able to use the domain for their own website. In practice, using it to run internet infrastructure or putting it into general UN/government coffers would be fine.