Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

ICANN may scrap its $0.18 reg tax in coronavirus “solidarity”

Kevin Murphy, April 28, 2020, 17:09:23 (UTC), Domain Registrars

ICANN is thinking about whether to temporarily waive the $0.18 it charges registrars (and therefore registrants) whenever a gTLD domain name is registered.

Execs said the idea was being considered during a conference call explaining ICANN’s new budget this afternoon.

The idea was floated by GoDaddy policy head James Bladel during the call, and supported by others, but it appears it had already also occurred to ICANN.

Bladel suggested that it might not make a big impact on registrants’ wallets, but that it would be a show of “solidarity” with registrars and registries that have waived domain recovery fees to help registrants that have been hit by coronavirus.

ICANN said it was looking at the idea but did not commit one way or the other.

Should such a waiver come into effect, it’s not clear whether it would be uniformly passed on to registrants.

Tagged: , ,

Comments (4)

  1. Yes, let’s look at the $30-40 million and leave the $2-3 billion untouched.

  2. Brad Mugford says:

    A better show of “solidarity” would be for ICANN to side with the vast majority of stakeholders and quit making decisions (removing legacy price caps, allowing .COM price increase, .ORG registry private equity takeover, etc.) that benefit only a handful of stakeholders, despite overwhelming opposition.

    Brad

  3. Richard Funden says:

    By Gabthars hammer, what a savings!

  4. Andrew says:

    Which one company in the world will benefit the most from this rebate ?

    Yes the same company asking for it (Godaddy).

    Godaddy currently pays ICANN $10.5 million a year in fees.

    Will we see that passed on to registrants ? #OneWeStand

Leave a Reply to Richard Funden