Taxing Online Business to Pay for Rural Fibre

There’s been talk of taxing the internet to help pay the huge costs of rolling out high-speed internet connections for a while, and now there’s been some suggestions to tax Netflix.  Now, I’m not sure I necessarily agree to tax a specific company, but how about online shops/services in general?  If you charge money for a product or service available online, you have to give, say x% of any sales (it could be tiny, 0.1% say).

Bricks and mortar stores pay local taxes, which go towards paying for the upkeep of the area, so why not tax online businesses to keep the internet open and fast?  The benefit of using it for opening up rural areas, or even to help speed up the roll-out of faster broadband, means they’re even paying to get more potential customers online or opening up more customers to new businesses like video streaming, which could increase their revenue (in the same way some stores lay on free buses).  It’s self-serving as much as anything else.