Australia fears the loss of tax revenue as described above. The EU and Canada have also issued discussion documents on electronic commerce. The OECD, which hosted a major conference on the topic in Ottawa last month, has concentrated on developing principles to be applied in analysing the situation and has avoided any hard recommendations. But on balance, they are tending to favour the USA approach. Ireland is the second-largest exporter of software in the world.
Software is one of the digitised products capable of being delivered over the Internet.
From that viewpoint, Ireland might expect to gain from electronic commerce the same advantages as those of the United States. But there is more to it than that. The challenge facing the Irish government is to see if they can make Ireland the favoured location for electronic commerce businesses. That requires not only favourable taxation rules but also state of the art telecommunications technology, and modernised copyright laws. It is unlikely to be all gain for Ireland.