Growing calls for “data dividends” and taxes miss the issue that there are no universally accepted methods for data valuation.
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As more and more policymakers and elected officials in the U.S. and around the world try to flex their regulatory muscles on cybersecurity and privacy, calls for a citizen data dividend or punitive data tax are getting louder, while the practical ways of achieving this grow more tenuous. The mechanics of this approach, however, much like the general lack of technology literacy on display by many lawmakers, is that the item they want to tax, data the world’s first limitless asset, currently has not generally accepted valuation methods from an accounting point of view. How then do you tax, track, let alone pay dividends on such an amorphous object as data and personal information?
Punitive approaches such as the imposition of privacy fines under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, are much easier to implement and have no linear correlation to the value of data nor to the economic harm caused to an affected party. The models being spoken of today for example by presidential hopeful Senator Amy…
