I've argued before that "intellectual property" should pay for its state protection like real estate does - i.e. be subject to property taxes, just for being there.
Fiddling with the numbers, one can make a reasonable tax equivalent to a few decades of (tax-free) protection, with the property reverting to the state/public domain in the end. The current time-span figures (closing on to a century) make the tax risible.
At one time I thought about something similar but the thing that tripped me up was what would the tax rate be based on? How do you propose to handle that?
Usually some assessed value of the property that has some relation to the market value of the property. But how would that work with copyrights that are not sold for which there is no market? How would you assess the value of a copyright in that scenario?
Fiddling with the numbers, one can make a reasonable tax equivalent to a few decades of (tax-free) protection, with the property reverting to the state/public domain in the end. The current time-span figures (closing on to a century) make the tax risible.