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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."
How will they tax the average Joe who got his PC hax0red and is being used a zombie for SPAM?
;)
Will be interesting to see them receive a 5 million Euro bill though!
Well, I guess I'll be seeing you in Norway then.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
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.
Under the aegis of "..., This is peanuts, but given the billions of transactions every day, this could still raise an immense income," he said....,
So, government when faced with a need for money (how often does that happen?) sees that billions of e-mails and text messages are being sent and infers they can and should extract a tiny morsel of blood from their constituents, concluding, "it's only a tiny bit". This is insane.
Better served and directed would be transparency by the government: "This is how much money we need, and this is what it will cost each taxpayer..." At least then the people get a more honest appraisal of what government is doing.
Foisting micro-taxes and micro-debits is also an additional unnecessary burden upon the billing mechanism for an already too complex system of charges.
If this were proposed in the United States, it would be almost singularly enough of a reason to cast my vote against any representative who supported such a scheme.
I think it's used quite a bit more over here because we don't have to pay for receiving.
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.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
I think that it is quite obvious that the intent is you'll be getting it at both ends ;)
No Comment.
Now the EU is moving in on our American urban legends!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Well, IIRC, it was an EU move to make it illegal to charge extortionate roaming rates on mobile phones. That's one way.
That's what you get for breathing fancy bottled air. Regular air not good enough for you? Too lazy to grow gills?
Man, you really need that seminar!
Sender- 1 cent (Euro, Dollar, whatever)
I've thought this was a good idea for a long time. Charge it at the net connection to companies or individuals. Privately, I send ~100 emails a month, professionally, ~200 on a busy month. Most of the professional ones are through Intranet, and $1.00 a month isn't going to put me in the hole.
Spammers, on the other hand, try sending in the hundreds of thousands to tens of millions range; $10,000 per batch pretty quickly adds up. Uh-oh, Granny caught a virus, and her PC is a zombie. First, her ISP probably already cut her off, second, make it easy to appeal. Prove (by being an old granny ) your PC is a zombie, the fine is lowered to $100. Teach her her lesson about not installing her virus definitions.
As with any law or tax, it needs to be implemented right, but I would love to see this, especially opposed to a tiered internet (different groups, I know, but same basic comcepts).
However Capone was tossed in Jail for Tax Evasion so passing a law that taxes those who send emails will hit exactly that part of the spammer world that needs to be hit - and hard!
With the exception that spam doesn't come from spammers, it comes from millions of innocent zombie machines sending them out.
well, the basic rule still holds true about any government's attatiude:
If it moves, tax it,
If it keeps moving regulate it,
If it stops moving; subsidise it
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''