EU Considers Taxing SMS Messages, Email

An anonymous reader writes to mention a Reuters article about a proposed EU tax on email and phone messages. From the article: "In Italy, the concept of a tax on texting was floated in the past, as a way to help offset the country's huge deficit, although it was flatly rejected by the outgoing government. But Lamassoure argues that with billions of emails and texts sent around the world, it's a novel and simple way to raise funds from new technology. 'Exchanges between countries have ballooned, so everyone would understand that the money to finance the EU should come from the benefits engendered by the EU,' he said."

Comments

Here's a way to fix the deficit

[dada21]

Stop spending so much.

When the economy slows down, fire some publicans. When the economy grows, fire more publicans so it can grow more. Start downsizing today, and then downsize tomorrow. Keep downsizing until you've downsized to the point of no more complaints for more money or overstretched budget.

I think there should be a law that says the minute that a government employee complains about his pay or his budget, he gets fired. Roll the money to someone else. When they complain, fire them and keep rolling it over and refunding it to the taxpayers.

I can't believe they want to tax communications more. To me, I believe that the Right to Expression is universal (inherent/God-given/natural), and that taxing expression in any way is regulating a right that can't be regulated.

Silliness

[MrNougat]

Let's think of something that lots of people do, then say we're going to tax it! Without even considering any of the details on how to apply the tax to the correct person or organization, how to collect that tax, or how to punish those who avoid the tax! Woohoo! Let's run around waving our arms like we're doing something!

Anyone with a whit of sense has to know that under the current technology there is no way to tax email. If you want to tax the sender, there would have to be a way to absolutely identify the sender of the email, which there's not. If you're going to tax the recipient, then you need to provide recipients a way to decline to receive email that they don't want to pay taxes on (spam), which means you have to have a way to absolutely identify the sender of the email, and there's still not a way to do that.

Re:As a UK resident...

[dyftm]

Well, IIRC, it was an EU move to make it illegal to charge extortionate roaming rates on mobile phones. That's one way.

Re:Sender (AKA) SPAMMER

[ShieldW0lf]

This is a horrible idea. Especially since its just a money grab by a government.

Maybe the government should cut its spending if it wants to reduce its debt. I'd love to be able just to take someone else's money to pay my own debt off.

These sorts of ideas are what leads to all these fucked up taxes. The debt belongs to the people of the country. The money belongs to the people of the country. The spending is on behalf of the people of the country.

If people started identifying with their government, and had an interest in having the budget work for them rather than being small minded and thinking of how to keep the government from getting any more money out of them, they'd stop thinking of taxes as inherantly evil and participate in making fair and intelligent plans for raising and allocating collective funds for collective problems and obligations.

Governments raise their money by trying as many ways they can to get taxes in, and hopefully some of them slip under the radar and don't get too many people yelling "Nay", then see what they have to work with. It results in massive bureaucracy, wasted money, unbalanced taxation and blown budgets, and it's ALL because of this attitude.

This is a stupid tax. It adds bureaucracy and requires new infrastructure investment, provides a disincentive to communication between people which ALWAYS has a chilling effect on progress, and for all that, it's getting the money from the same source: the people who live there. Digging a new door into the treasury isn't going to get you more money. It's just hard work for nothing.

Re:Sender (AKA) SPAMMER

[Peter Greenwood]

If people started identifying with their government

Ah, but which government?

Here in Britain we now have "the Government", meaning Tony Blair and his cronies at Westminster, and then a whole bunch of other talking shops - notably more popular among politicians than other people. There is the Scottish parliament, the Welsh parliament, various ex terrorists and their friends doing nothing much in Northern Ireland (which is possibly the point), and the EU over in Brussels. Not to mention the UN.

Every one of these entities - except the one in Northern Ireland - feels a need to justify its existence, to make its mark on people's lives. This costs money - especially for the EU, which among other things likes to be seen as the generous provider of subsidies to all and sundry.

When all these politicians stop inventing jobs for themselves, and start trying to do the real, necessary jobs properly and responsibly, the rest of us might start to support them - maybe even vote for mainstream party candidates again.