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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.

5 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Kinda funny how taxes set back the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So taxes "set back the country's technological development by some 20 years", and when it's the internet the Slashdot crowd agrees.

    But if it's anything else, taxes are so great. "Pay your share!" Despite the fact that the government doing the taxing is just going to use those resources against you in the form of militarized police, warrantless wiretaps, and drone surveillance.

    1. Re:Kinda funny how taxes set back the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But if you delve a little deeper ...

      It turns out that the major ISP in Hungary is in the same group as T-Mobile, and has revenues of over $2bn, and since they're not a Hungarian company you can bet your ass they are not paying corporation tax at the levels that they should. This tax is expected to raise $100m per year, and it can be offset against corporation tax. That's the key fact there. This looks to me like a ploy to get T-Mobile to pay their corporation tax in Hungary. Expect to see similar ploys all over the world. The corp. tax system is irredeemably broken and taxation of services in the country of delivery is one option to fix that. The figure is no doubt selected to generate the exact revenue they want.

  2. Surely there's more to come :( by tibit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hungary is, sadly, turning into authoritarian regime focused on maintaining the power of those at the top. Anything that feeds their spending habits is on the table, I'm sure. We should expect more news like that coming from Hungary :(

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  3. What looks like a stupid tax from the US... by Torp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... looks like an attempt to restrict free speech from a little closer to Hungary. The current regime has serious totaliarian tendencies and this tax (which will raise internet connection prices) leaves less avenues of communication for the Hungarian citizens.
    Note the prices for an internet connection; at 30 gbytes/month, this tax could double the entry level price. At the average salary in Hungary, the extra $18 will be felt.

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  4. Re:A few things... by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A large percentage of revenues from this tax will come from piracy and pornography. Nice way to fund a government and an interesting way to establish a conflict of interest in those matters.