and overpaid ministers/mps who act as moonshines directors in multinational companies do not needs to delcare @ all…did leekuanyew declared his earnins as consultant to citibank inc?

hmm.. the tax issue seems rather straightforward, Bloggers who get advertising dollars are just self employed individuals. They have to declare their own earnings. The policing, if any, will be the same for other self employed individuals. e.g insurance or housing agents.

Who says transactions cannot be taxed there. Go and try to buy a space station without paying tax. See whether it can be done. Cannot. You will have strange people in funny hats knocking on your door with tax return forms.

The problem is the people who know how to syndicate all this will never share their knowledge. They started developing their know how some 10 years back ago. They did it quietly.

During that time our gahmen kept saying there is nothing worthwhile in the cyberspace. These people on the otherhand saw gold, so they jaga the cyberspace like a baby tiger, feeding, caring and protecting it from day one. So they invested in the knowledge. They put their best brains to develop virtual monetary exchange systems that can even put to shame the IMF, ADB and World Bank put together.

Some even have international networks, linkages complete with banks / insurance / arbitrage and so on and so forth. Gahmen could have done the same. Who was stopping them? Ten years ago cyberspace was the wild west, but they were too busy dismissing cyberspace. So who do you think stepped into the blank space?

The question is do you think these people will teach the gahmen how to do their song and dance?

I dont think so. If they did MDA and IRAS can put their act together in less than a week. They are that organized and that good. I guarantee you. The problem as I see it is why should they even teach our gahmen? There is no incentive to do so. No money there.

The declaration would help to state up front where the blogger is coming from. Might not necessarily mean what the blogger writes is or has to be biased towards the sponsor. The decision then becomes a more informed one for the readers, and overall improved health on info reliability. This, I welcome.

The only issue is how best to effect this. Direct regulation is difficult, and not just because of the “vastness” of cyberspace. Someone mentioned taxation, and that’s a good example of a stumbling block – mountains need to be moved before MDA and IRAS can come to some agreement on how to plug this potential policy blackhole – i.e. who collects the taxes, who polices, etc.

My worry is, now this made public, that some effort will have to be made to come up with some semblance of a policy that is mostly ineffective. Think 377A saga. Too much ambiguity will a) prompt bloggers to ridicule and dismiss it, or b) lead to excessive caution and over-self-regulation. Neither of these outcomes do much good for consumers seeking info online, actually, just throws more smoke into the fray.

Surprisingly, the best solution could be to encourage a “commercial blogger code of honour”, outside the realm of regulation. But there are so many loose strings that comes naturally with this that govt cannot possibly take it up. Nor is there a need to, really, since it would be a community-based evolution.

(Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”)

look at which newspaper was promoting it, and who/what it was promoting.
kinda self-explanatory. :D

The final passage ‘borrowed from
http://dotseng.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/is-mda-asking-bloggers-to-declare-their-income-an-interview-with-missy-dotty/
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Q; Just a final question Dotty; you know the people in wayangparty are quite nervous by this development – do you think, the MDA ruling will work against them?

A: Really I don’t see why that should be Darkness. We’ve all being told time and again: there is nothing but lies and disinformation in the internet. Invoking the law may just break that magic spell – why should anyone do such a silly thing?

Really dont be so ridiculous.
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ROFL…after so many attempts by Singapore’s body politic to discredit the validity of opinions and comments found on the internet blog sites and opinion pages (except for Reach, etc), any attempt to control the ‘final frontier’ moves a LONG way to legitimize the users of the internet.

*sigh* I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I guess the fear of the unknown (and the lack of control) is finally causing enough consternation to the incumbents who want to maintain their way of life…sadly, they keep forgetting that the only constant is change. :)

http://dotseng.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/is-mda-asking-bloggers-to-declare-their-income-an-interview-with-missy-dotty/

Everything is under control

SD

(Internet Liaison officer of the brotherhood)