A group of British music managers is bidding to tax concert tickets re-sold over the Internet so that a slice of the profits goes to the artist in question. The business, worth an estimated $400 million annually in the UK,  is up in arms at the idea,  saying it is effectively the same as paying Ford Motor Company for a new car,  then paying Ford again when you want to sell it on.

Of course,  media headlines tend to focus on the tickets whose values soar on the secondary market.  A quick browse on eBay,  for example,  shows that tickets to Led Zeppelin’s eagerly awaited reunion on Dec. 10 in London  are going for as much as 750 pounds ($1,500) each,  six times their face value.

But many tickets re-sold online are at a discount to their face value. If that is the case, would the seller have to pay the proposed tax anyway under the new scheme? Or would logic dictate that the artist in question should actually pay a tax to the out-of-pocket punter?