What we have with spam is an example of the "tragedy of the commons." E-mail is a virtually free resource and since it is almost cost-free and no one owns this resource, some people find it easy to exploit in a wasteful manner.
Imagine what would happen if there were no concept of private property and it cost nothing to put up billboards and the technology was such that one advertiser could place thousands of billboard almost instantaneously. Now imagine that criminals had a scam where placing each billboard only cost them one one hundred-thousandth of a cent, but they stood to "earn" one cent from each billboard. There would be signs everywhere!
There needs to be some sort of enforceable standard for property rights that could be applied to electronic communication. I do not know how such a system could be made to work. The closest thing I can think of has to do with telemarketer phone calls.
In the "do not call" controversy over telemarketing calls, quite typically, the liberal courts saw it as a "freedom of speech" issue for telemarketers to be able to call you whether you want their calls or not. If you want to control what you get over your own phone, that is somehow "censorship." Now, if there were the understanding that your phone number was your property (even though you are actually renting it from the phone company), the argument could be made against telemarketers on the grounds of your right to privacy and your right to be free of tresspassers (in the same way someone renting an apartment is free to bar tresspassers or other unwelcome guests). Of course, such a concept of property rights would not be accepted by leftist courts that, in the name of "privacy" and "freedom," are all to eager to allow vocal or wealthy interest groups to impose costs on the rest of society. Having a system of property rights would clear up a lot of confusion, but there are interest groups that profit by this confusion.
Good in theory, not practical in practice.
Spammers steal other mail servers and hide their tracks, who pays the tax?
Some of the largest spammers operate in asia, who enforces the tax?
A single email can cross through 10 or 20 routers, how do you count and quantify the amount of tax due?
I disagree. I am not a spammer but I generally send more than 30 emails a DAY, let alone a month. I have friends, acquaintences and business associates that do not like any of the instant messenging services and so we commnicate via email. I also belong to several different organizations that communicate ACTION ALERTS via email - these are grass root unfunded groups. Why should we have to pay because of unscrupulous spammers?
I'm sorry a tax on e-mail is definitely NOT the way to go.
The way to go is to rigorously enforce existing computer-crime laws against any attempt to circumvent spam filtering (e.g. the tricks described in Msg#6).