Taxing Text Messages?

Makarand writes "SMS is a very popular way of communication in the Phillipines with an estimated 14 million phone subscribers sending an average of 10 text messages a day. However, that may all change if a proposal from the IMF to impose a tax on SMS is implemented to solve the country's fiscal problems according to an article in The Straits Times. The IMF is basing its suggestion on the fact that the country's tax base currently rests on the troubled sectors of the economy- banking and manufacturing, which cannot be squeezed anymore. Hopefully, our political think tanks will not get any such ideas."

Comments

The IMF is a Scam

[hanwen]

I recently read an article on the IMF.

The IMF is a vehicle for implementing a policy that is designed to make poor nations poorer, and the US based financial world richer.

The IMF has a standard approach of privatization, deregularization, more taxes and less government spending. In practice, state assets are sold off to foreign investors, and capitals markets are deregulated to open the gates for speculation. At some point the price of basic living (cooking, heating, taxes) is raised, causing massive civil unrest, and collapse of the economy. In the ensuing turmoil, foreign corporations can buy the remaining assets of a country at garage-sale prices.

Don't take my word for it. Read about Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate, former IMF economist and former director of the worldbank)

• salon
• The Observer
• The new republic online.

Or name a country where IMF intervention did work: (it failed in Indonesia, Thailand, Russia, Brazil and Argentina)