British Government Considers Tax on Computers 638
Jumbo Jimbo writes "A story in the UK Times talks about the UK government's proposals to tax personal computers, as a replacement for the television license currently paid by every household with a TV. These are proposals and aren't intended for a few years yet, but due to the growth of computer ownership, this would probably amount to a tax on nearly everybody. Hope it's not per computer, or those people with a pile of old 286s in the shed could be in for a shock."
Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Total conjecture (Score:5, Informative)
Hard to enforce (Score:3, Informative)
Saw this yesterday (Score:2, Informative)
Not mooted until 2017 currently. The playing field will be a lot different by then, so it may be moved forward.
I would expect the fees would be a lot lower than the £120 TV licence currently in place. PC users would not be accessing BBC content 24/7.
Re:Hard to enforce (Score:2, Informative)
Article summary (Score:2, Informative)
"THE BBC licence fee should be replaced by a tax on the ownership of a personal computer instead of a television, ministers said yesterday.
Tessa Jowell told the BBC that the licence fee would be retained for at least another ten years until 2017 in return for abolishing the Board of Governors. But the Culture Secretary conceded that technological advances would mean that a fee based on "television ownership could become redundant".
More than six million households have access to high-speed broadband connections and the BBC has begun experimenting with broadcasting video clips over the internet.
A legal loophole highlighted by the communications regulator Ofcom means that viewers could watch television and listen to radio over the internet and mobile devices free, potentially costing the BBC millions of pounds in licence fees.
The Dept for Culture, Media and Sport's Green Paper setting out the BBC's long-term future
Officially, the Government says that changes would not be needed until 2017,... but insiders said that the department would act if internet viewing took off.
Over the next few years, internet broadcasting is set to increase rapidly... The BBC already broadcasts all its radio stations over the internet, and [some TV too]
Ofcom predicts that more than half of Britain's households will be watching television over the internet by 2012. Other emerging technologies will allow television to be broadcast direct to mobile phones. [O2 aiming to test in 2007]
tax on windows? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Note for Americans (Score:3, Informative)
Since I suspect you pulled this out or your arse perhaps you could link to some scientific study to backup your theory. If not then your theory is no more valid than mine. Mine being that people in the UK do not like tax increases.
Same thing in Germany, (Score:1, Informative)
See here. [slashdot.org]
Hang about (Score:1, Informative)
I thought this was kind of covered already [tvlicensing.co.uk]
I don't know quite how they'd do this? I suppose they could tax TV cards at sale, or maybe they can detect the use of the receiving equipment as they currently do [tvlicensing.co.uk]. That said maybe they can pick up any CRT display device??
The implementation should be interesting (Score:1, Informative)
...and anyone with a calculator, washing machine, mobile phone...
Re:Fair point actually (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wait.. hold on (Score:3, Informative)
See, in Ireland the state sponsored broadcaster, RTÉ, is supported by funds from TV taxes, like the BBC. Unlike the BBC, they also show loads of advertising. You get the worst of both systems in Ireland.
Re:Note for Americans (Score:5, Informative)
The point is that the NHS was very badly underfunded in the past, so increased funding was clearly needed. British people want free health care: the National Insurance premiums are based on your ability to pay and available to everyone.
Nobody in the UK *wants* to pay more taxes. However, people have made the logical connection between more funding and better services, so are prepared to pay higer taxes if it brings them a benefit. This happened back in 1997 when the right-wing Conservatives were thrown out after decades of heading towards a more US style small government, free market approach to government.
Our taxes are still lower than [eubusiness.com] much of Europe. On a £30,000 salary, you could expect to pay £5300 tax and £2800 National Insurance (health and state pension contributions)
There is something of a warm and fuzzy feeling about the NHS - it was founded in the socialist reforms after world war 2 that aimed to create a more equitable society out of the incredibly poor state the war left the UK in.
The NHS is good enough for most purposes: waiting times are down, staff recruitment is up. I went into my local hospital with a broken arm on a busy afternoon, was seen straight away and was on my way home within a couple of hours. The state of dental care is another matter, of course, and so is the whole MRSA/nursing staff not knowing how to wash their hands thing. I don't know many people with private health insurance.
Re:Nope, you are wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
Please let me show you...
"If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes (for example, a VCR, set-top box, DVD recorder or PC with a broadcast card) - you need a TV Licence."
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/
It's HOW you use it, not what your equipment can be used FOR.
I don't have a TV tuned it or aerialed up at ALL, so called up the TV license people, told them that and they promptly said I didn't have to pay and sent me a form to get a refund of what I'd already paid for that month.
BBC Radio (Score:4, Informative)
Also, I think that it is important that the BBC (especially radio) remains free to access. Personally, I'd like to see the BBC adopt a model such as Mandrake use, i.e. people who like it pay, in order to keep it free for everyone to use.
Re:Also in Belgium (Score:3, Informative)
Ah but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. That would still be a copyright infringement and remain illegal under the current proposal. Think about it: if the 40 euro covered whatever copyright infringement, you could also put "pirated" copies of Windows, Office, or any other commercial software on it legally.
Also many computers (think businesses) are never ever used for copyright infringement, but they would have to pay the tax too.
Sweden (Score:3, Informative)
The TV-license is going to transform into a "media license" and everyone with access to a computer, TV or other "media"-item is going to have to pay for the use of it.
Personally I'm not a fan of TV-licensing, and this is even less titillating to me.
Re:Nope, you are wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
The TV licencing goons' inability to accept this is, of course, another matter. But then, they can't seem to get it into their brains that some people can manage to live without a TV at all, so subtlities like whether a TV is installed are clearly beyond them.
Re:Nope, you are wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/Ukpga_1
Gas Act 1995
22.--(1) Where a public gas transporter has reasonable cause to suspect--
(a) that gas conveyed by him is escaping, or may escape, in any premises; or
(b) that gas so conveyed which has escaped has entered, or may enter, any premises,
any officer authorised by the transporter may, on production of some duly authenticated document showing his authority, enter the premises
Re:Cue.. (Score:5, Informative)
Try the world! The BBC's TV and Radio programs are widely watched and listened to around the world by alot more people than use the service in the UK. I don't think people in the UK are quite aware of just how big an international PR medium the BBC is. Other countries can only dream of having a state controlled TV network that is watched by this kind of an international audience. Furthermore, at least in so far as news reporting is concerned, the BBC commands alot more respect internationally than the big US networks do (Althoug to be fair there is a number of notable exceptions to this rule among the latter but it is depressingly small) recent reporting scandals not withstanding.
Re:Nope, you are wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
But the BBC says this [tvlicensing.co.uk]:
"If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes (for example, a VCR, set-top box, DVD recorder or PC with a broadcast card) - you need a TV Licence. You are required by law to have one."
Looks like using one for a DVD player, or your old Commadore 64 would be OK without a licence, the key is "If you use", not "If you have".
You DO need one "If you use" a tuner card in your PC to watch TV, but not if you use it for digitising home movies.
Re:Also in Belgium (Score:1, Informative)
It's more like a fine you're paying whether or not you downloaded illegal content. Basically, in Belgium everyone who owns a pc is consider a criminal. In return for the tax, you have the right to make home copies of your own collection. Only problem is: we already have that right to make our own copies.
Moreover, we in Belgium are already paying a tax to compensate pirate losses: the price of every storage medium (going from HD's tot DVD's) has a tax on it besides VAT. The money goes to a company called Uradex which redistributes it under artists. In reality: they make millions of euro's but at the moment the memberartists only have seen 300.000 euros. And it's not the downloaders who pay the most: it's companies who do a lot of data storage without downloading one single byte of illegal content that are paying Uradex. Simply put: It's a scam.
Besides, today we learned that SABAM is being sued for not paying up fast enough. The justice department even suspects fraud and corruption. I guess they put the money on a bankaccount or invest it so they make outreagous profit from the interest.
In total: Belgian taxation on computers includes in the véry near future:
- VAT (21%)
- PC Tax
- Recycling tax (yes, we pay because obsolete computers are damaging to the environment)
- Storage tax (taxes on storage media)
Don't get me started on all the other taxes (social security, environmental 'green' taxes,...) we have to pay. When the liberals (center-right) took over five years ago they promised to cut taxes down...
Basically we're being robbed by our own government.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
Enforcement is traditionally carried out by TV detector vans with DF detection equipment (or hand-portable versions of the same) - the flyback transformer frequency is apparently pretty easy to detect and can be spotted from the road. You don't need to know what they're watching, just that they're watching *something*. Most houses have licenses, so I suspect they'll concentrate on houses that don't have licenses.
This is to a large extent helped by TV retailers, who take your address when you buy a TV. If you buy a TV and don't have a license, that fact will find its way to the relevant people, and I guess you're more likely to have a detector van coming round.
LCD and plasma TVs are kind of tricky for this, bcos they don't have the same hardware and so may not be detectable. PCs with TV cards are also not detectable, bcos a PC monitor runs at a different frequency, and also there's no way of proving a PC is being used to watch TV.
Technically you can get out of paying your license if you've modified your TV such that it can't receive signals from an aerial. There have been a few test cases for this. But the cost of modification is likely to be more than the cost of the license.
In any case, TV licenses are one tax that Brits generally don't mind paying - what you get for your money is usually worth it. American TV shows what you get if you don't - 50 channels of dreck. There are certainly some good shows on American TV, but they tend to follow the Hollywood film formula rather than the TV series formula. And US TV uses advertising to a degree that Brits (and Europeans generally) wouldn't consider acceptable.
Grab.
Re:Nope, you are wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't let the inspector in, they can only gain entry to search for an illegal telly by providing evidence that you have one to a court - typically this will be done by using TV detector equipment, or observing the glow of a TV through the curtains from the street at night. Not sure if they use that one so much today seeing as it could be a PC monitor and not a telly.
However, if you don't have a telly and you don't let the inspectors in to have a look around, they will keep pestering you with letters and doorstepping until you give in. From the TV licencing people's PoV it makes sense as only something like 1% of the population genuinely don't own a TV, but it does royally piss off the people who don't and keep getting pestered.
A few years ago they ran an advertising campaign where they displayed randomly selected street signs from around the country with the slogan "we know that X households in this street are watching television illegally" but they had to drop it after complaints from the residents in those streets who felt they were being unfairly accused.
Re:BBC Radio (Score:2, Informative)
The World Service is funded by the Government, not the licence fee. See here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/#provides [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Nope, you are wrong. (Score:2, Informative)
I have a TV license, but it's good to make them jump through loops when their records get cocked up.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a tuning crystal (or equivalent) you have to pay unless you can prove it has never been used for the purpose of receiving TV programs. So, unless you live in a Faraday cage and can prove you have no way of receiving the programs, you have to pay.
Having a TV you never turn on does not exempt you. Not having an aerial does not exempt you. Using your TV for other things and never watching TV does not exempt you.
The license is for capability, not use.
mod parent down ignorant (Score:2, Informative)
TV licencing told me on the phone a few years ago that I could use my TV to watch videos without a licence. They added a comment to that effect in their database. So long as you de-tune from all the broadcast channels and unplug the aerial, you're fine. Straight from the horses mouth.