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Hungary To Tax Internet Traffic

Posted by Soulskill on from the how-to-kill-your-youtube-habit dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Hungarian government has announced a new tax on internet traffic: 150 HUF ($0.62 USD) per gigabyte. In Hungary, a monthly internet subscription costs around 4,000-10,000 HUF ($17-$41), so it could really put a constraint on different service providers, especially for streaming media. This kind of tax could set back the country's technological development by some 20 years — to the pre-internet age. As a side note, the Hungarian government's budget is running at a serious deficit. The internet tax is officially expected to bring in about 20 billion HUF in income, though a quick look at the BIX (Budapest Internet Exchange) and a bit of math suggests a better estimate of the income would probably be an order of magnitude higher.

1 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nah, this is just stage 1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    When you start with "Reagan said..." you've already simplified beyond recognition.

    Most anecdotes Reagan had of "this guy I know who could no longer help his children because of ____ " -- they were all completely made up. He got that bedtime story voice and a boatload of Bull -- and THAT sounds like a guy making sense and being authentic to a lot of fools. Reagan made a lot more sense before he sold out his Liberal rhetoric and started betraying actors for Hoover.

    So why does he get so much credit on slashdot? Is this the new libertarian conservative shithole of the internet?