Hungary To Tax Internet Traffic

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @12:57AM 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.

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Re:A few things... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-22 01:15 · Score: 5, Informative

Hungarian dude here.
1. That will be delegated to the ISPs. The plan is, that the ISPs should pay these taxes from their profits, and are expected NOT to increase the internet subscription fees, however, they will anyhow.
2. It is a tax on everything. not just streaming.
3. They won't leave anything untaxed.