States Taxing the Cloud: It Was Only a Matter of Time

Grazed from Wired.  Author: Robbie Wright.

You know what they say about two things being certain in life. The tax part of that illustrious pair is now rearing its ugly head in the world of cloud computing. It seems that politicians are finally starting to realize that this cloud computing “thing” is actually generating a lot of revenue — and they want their slice of the pie. However, let’s stay far away from the politics and just consider the ramifications of cloud taxation on cloud adoption.

Legislators in Massachusetts, among others, have begun pursuing or have already been successful in applying taxation to web-based services. The big question in my mind is what this actually affects. What difference, if any, will taxation make in the cloud market?…

The Effect of Taxing the Cloud

Alright, full disclosure time … my first reaction to the question of taxing the cloud was a big “So, what!” My logic was that cloud costs would increase somewhere around 4.5% in the Massachusetts example, which would still leave cloud-based solutions with a cost-advantage over physical deployments. I thought this might level the playing field somewhat in a few fringe cases. However, as I started looking into it a little bit more, a few things came to light…

Read more from the source @ http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/04/states-taxing-the-cloud-it-was-only-a-matter-of-time