Hello Rick,
There is lots of literature on what happens to markets and the poor with regressive taxes, "flat taxes" have the allure of fairness which is why the rich rarely support them.
On the subject of taxes, there are two main types that I know of: Income tax on an individual or company - as I understand it, the tax is on the profit (ie revenue minus expenses earning that revenue) Value-added tax - as I understand it, it is charged on the retail price Neither tax is related to the number of goods sold. In Australia, Melbourne IT pays a tax to the Government on our profit, and we also pay 10% of our retail price to Australian customers to the Government as a value-added tax (which is applied to all goods and services) on behalf of our retail customers (ie we act as a collection agency). Whenever we change the retail price, we change the amount we pay the Government. Whenever our profit changes (which has not been in proportion to domain name volumes over the last few years), our tax to the Government changes. I would have no problem with ICANN charging using either of those two methods - ie a percentage of profit from selling gtld names - or a percentage of the retail sales price per name The ICANN model of a per transaction fee is only equitable under an environment where we are all charging the same retail price and our costs are similar (ie our per domain name profit is similar). This is clearly not the case, otherwise we would clearly be sales agents for the registry. I don't disagree that the increase in ICANN fees will affect a small registrar, but it should be understood that the increase in transaction fee (from 18 cents to 25 cents) significantly affects large registrars that sell a large volume of names at a small or even negative margin. The increase in transaction fee cost could result in some companies with large number of names leaving the industry. The real measure is whether a small or large company is making a profit after the increase in ICANN fees, as to whether they will continue in the industry. This is not directly related to the number of transactions. The bottom line is that there is an large overall increase in fees for registrars as a whole, and nobody (big or small) is happy with the increase they have to pay individually. Regards, Bruce