Re: [hackathon] One Tax API Hackathon proposal

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

I strongly suspect OASIS is a better forum for this type of work than IETF
or W3C because that is where you are likely to find a consensus of the
relevant expertise.

BUT, you are likely to find that even that isn't quite enough and you need
to go to the UN and WTO because fundamentally, the problem is to get
governments to agree on how they are going to label taxable items and what
forms of tariff they apply. And that is certainly not going to be a closed
set.

Different tariff rates apply according to where the goods are coming from,
where they are going and what the goods are. In some cases there is a
straight tariff, in others there is a value added tax. Tariffs may be
percentages or they may be a fee per item, or both. A global system of
embodied carbon tariffs are in discussion.

There is also a significant faction that is going to resist any effort to
make this work more easily. The complexity of tariffs is in many cases
deliberate as they create non tariff barriers to imports competing with
domestic product.

I can't see how an automated API is going to work unless it has a direct
connection to the organization chartered to manage global trade.