Just caught this on the news: http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=17014 Taxing is quite high as it is, I know that in other countries you get taxed by SMSing, but getting taxed by emailing?!. Is this another indication that EU policies are just for money grabbing in order to finance projects which are out of control of all the goverments. I think that the EU needs from serious reform before continuing to get our tax money. Also, this is the last thing that Gordon Brown needs, another indirect way of taxation!
As I said text messaging is already taxed in some EU countries, a natural evolution of this would be to expand it to email. Considering the number of emails, this is not the end of this proposal.
That would be a national taxation policy and not an EU policy though. Also I presume that UK SMS messages are already subject to VAT.
Well much of the VAT goes straight to the EU, don't think that the companies tax you directly that much. Everytime I top up my mobile in Spain or Portugal , for example, I get the taxes taken straight away from my mobile, that does not happen over here, so the taxation system is different. The bit that scares me the most is this continuous talks about how to get more tax money.
It still works the same way - its just the tax is paid off all in one go. Here £15 buys £15 credit the cost per minute/message contains some tax. In Spain IVA (their VAT) is taken off as a lump sum
That quote was in the opening post link too It is one MEP's idea, and it is being reviewed by a working group. It doesn't mean that the EU supports it or it is going to happen - so at this point it is too early to say that the 'EU policy makers are lossing it' (sic)
As the article said, taxing probably wont work. I would however support a nominal charge that could be introduced by ISP's (say 0.01p) per email that was automatically charged for every email sent. That way, "normal" users would only pay a few pence every year, but spammers would be hit hard and hopefully it would become unprofitable for them.
So? I could propose a tax of 1p every time someone goes for a dump, which would equally raise an immense income, but that doesn't mean it would be a good idea.
the only people that would likely hit hard would be newsletter writers with a large circulation, spammers make lots of money because people actually PURCHASE what they are touting...
That and spammers send their e-mail through nigh on untraceable open SMTP relays installed on unpatched Windows boxes run by morons.
Unfortunely it is true that people actually buy stuff from spammers. I have no idea if the figures would work out, but if it was possible to make it uneconomical for them and the price was to remain as a nominal ammount, I would support the principle. I wouldn't imagine that the majority of advertising free newsletters go to enough people to end up costing any serious ammounts of money. Those that do go to huge numbers of people are ususally profit making due to advertising.
Window tax anyone. I do not see much of a problem with sms taxes as they are something you pay for (although i dont want it) but email taxes are taking it a little too far.
