EU Considers Taxing SMS Messages, Email 314
An anonymous reader writes to mention a Reuters article about a proposed EU tax on email and phone messages. From the article: "In Italy, the concept of a tax on texting was floated in the past, as a way to help offset the country's huge deficit, although it was flatly rejected by the outgoing government. But Lamassoure argues that with billions of emails and texts sent around the world, it's a novel and simple way to raise funds from new technology. 'Exchanges between countries have ballooned, so everyone would understand that the money to finance the EU should come from the benefits engendered by the EU,' he said."
Sender or Receiver? (Score:2, Interesting)
If it's the sender, then this might would be a good way to reduce spam originating from the EU.
Re:Sender or Receiver? (Score:5, Funny)
Sender (AKA) SPAMMER (Score:3, Interesting)
I've thought this was a good idea for a long time. Charge it at the net connection to companies or individuals. Privately, I send ~100 emails a month, professionally, ~200 on a busy month. Most of the professional ones are through Intranet, and $1.00 a month isn't going to put me in the hole.
Spammers, on the other hand, try sending in the hundreds of thousands to tens of millions range; $10,000 per batch pretty quickly adds up. Uh-oh, Granny caught a virus, and her PC
Re:Sender (AKA) SPAMMER (Score:2)
Re:Sender (AKA) SPAMMER (Score:2)
The first thing that comes to mind is that there is a fool around every corner...And they usually have a Granny too so even if "Granny" does learn her lesson spammers move to the next. I don't see how it will curtail spamming in any way actually. This is why you are in favor of such a move, correct? There are a lot more negatives than positives with this type of scenario in my humb
Re:Sender (AKA) SPAMMER (Score:3, Insightful)
Money to legislators is like cake to a fat kid.
Re:Sender (AKA) SPAMMER (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the government should cut its spending if it wants to reduce its debt. I'd love to be able just to take someone else's money to pay my own debt off.
These sorts of ideas are what leads to all these fucked up taxes. The debt belongs to the people of the country. The money belongs to the people of the country. The spending is on behalf of the people of the country.
If people started identifying with their government, and had an interest in having the budget work for them rather than being small minded and thinking of how to keep the government from getting any more money out of them, they'd stop thinking of taxes as inherantly evil and participate in making fair and intelligent plans for raising and allocating collective funds for collective problems and obligations.
Governments raise their money by trying as many ways they can to get taxes in, and hopefully some of them slip under the radar and don't get too many people yelling "Nay", then see what they have to work with. It results in massive bureaucracy, wasted money, unbalanced taxation and blown budgets, and it's ALL because of this attitude.
This is a stupid tax. It adds bureaucracy and requires new infrastructure investment, provides a disincentive to communication between people which ALWAYS has a chilling effect on progress, and for all that, it's getting the money from the same source: the people who live there. Digging a new door into the treasury isn't going to get you more money. It's just hard work for nothing.
Re:Sender (AKA) SPAMMER (Score:3, Insightful)
If people started identifying with their government
Ah, but which government?
Here in Britain we now have "the Government", meaning Tony Blair and his cronies at Westminster, and then a whole bunch of other talking shops - notably more popular among politicians than other people. There is the Scottish parliament, the Welsh parliament, various ex terrorists and their friends doing nothing much in Northern Ireland (which is possibly the point), and the EU over in Brussels. Not to mention the UN.
Every one o
Re: Sender or Receiver? - Neither (Score:2)
Increased federalisation and progress towards a super-state has just been rejected by referenda many pro-europe countries, so it's unlikely to be getting raising taxes any time soon.
How can they enforce or collect on this at all? (Score:2)
2. log into gmail
3. send email out
4. pay no taxes
Can't that be done? You're not going through a pop server from your ISP, in theory the ISP just sees you going to a proxy server. Right? Or is there much more to this than that?
How about SPAM? (Score:4, Interesting)
Will be interesting to see them receive a 5 million Euro bill though!
BRILLIANT! Re:How about SPAM? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since I don't know anyone in the EU I never phone there or send emails anyways. Even if I do the number will be low.
However Capone was tossed in Jail for Tax Evasion so passing a law that taxes those who send emails will hit exactly that part of the spammer world that needs to be hit - and hard!
If it happens to hit some innocent folks who set up open mail gateways, or otherwise connect (willing) unsecured hosts to high speed lines, then I guess this is reasonable coll
Re:BRILLIANT! Re:How about SPAM? (Score:4, Informative)
With the exception that spam doesn't come from spammers, it comes from millions of innocent zombie machines sending them out.
Re:BRILLIANT! Re:How about SPAM? (Score:2)
Yes, why you think zombifying PC-s for sending spam is good? In this case, you can stop sending me spam cuz I'm not buying your c1al3s.
Re:How about SPAM? (Score:3, Insightful)
The guy wises up and gets the home builder, or himself, to fill in the gaping cracks or finds a better more secure house.
Maybe taxing e-mail is the solution to spam. It smartens up Joe Average or enrages him to the point that something is done about it.
It sure is a shame that e-mail is s
What about an O2 tax? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about an O2 tax? (Score:2)
Re:What about an O2 tax? (Score:2)
Already done... (Score:2, Interesting)
Nothing new there
Gtnx
Marcel
Re:Already done... (Score:2)
That doesn't sound like they're taxing the air itself, but rather the service of filling the container.
Re:Already done... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about an O2 tax? (Score:4, Funny)
If it moves, tax it,
If it keeps moving regulate it,
If it stops moving; subsidise it
Re:What about an O2 tax? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What about an O2 tax? (Score:3, Insightful)
A couple of wise men 200 years ago realized this. They made a big stink about it, too...
all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.
Re:What about an O2 tax? (Score:2)
From the wikipedia article:
Here on slashdot, it is the most
Let's not address over-spending (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let's not address over-spending (Score:2)
Rather good way to spend taxes, if you ask me.
Some education... (Score:2, Insightful)
Repeat after me,
"IT IS NOT FREE, IT IS PAID FOR BY TAXES"
Now, proceed to make a half-assed attempt to justify your previous statement and how it is completely contradicted by reality.
Re:Let's not address over-spending (Score:2)
College-Level education: You must be joking. The US education in the top universities is good. But why do you guess half of your faculty is imported from elsewhere?
Unemployment: You may be u
As a UK resident... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As a UK resident... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As a UK resident... (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, because I can send SMS with my CDMA phone. Maybe GSM was first to have SMS support, but that's like having a Xerox tax on all PCs because Xerox was first with the mouse or whatever.
Also, should we really be thanking the EU for mandating a technologically inferior cell phone standard with a horrible non-backward compatible upgrade path? GSM uses a TDMA over-the-air
SMS? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SMS? (Score:5, Informative)
Stinks! (Score:2)
Dude! Movies! Xmen. 5. Dennys? cool.
Re:SMS? (Score:2)
Look! (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets just hope our populous is ignorant enough to swallow it and realize we're actually levying an excessive tax on something that has ZERO cost to the government in the first place.
But hey, money's money right? I should bring this idea up in the Canadian Parliament, lets get them to impose a tax on every page view on the internet. Not only will we be out of debt in no time, we'll be rich Rich RICH!!!
Oh the fallacies and deceit sitting on a pile of incompetence and idiocy!
That's it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That's it (Score:2)
Re:That's it (Score:3, Insightful)
Norway isn't a member of the EU. But you knew that, right?
Here's a way to fix the deficit (Score:4, Insightful)
When the economy slows down, fire some publicans. When the economy grows, fire more publicans so it can grow more. Start downsizing today, and then downsize tomorrow. Keep downsizing until you've downsized to the point of no more complaints for more money or overstretched budget.
I think there should be a law that says the minute that a government employee complains about his pay or his budget, he gets fired. Roll the money to someone else. When they complain, fire them and keep rolling it over and refunding it to the taxpayers.
I can't believe they want to tax communications more. To me, I believe that the Right to Expression is universal (inherent/God-given/natural), and that taxing expression in any way is regulating a right that can't be regulated.
Re:Here's a way to fix the deficit (Score:3, Funny)
Hi, I am Apu from India. Can I get that job?
Re:Here's a way to fix the deficit (Score:5, Funny)
disingenuous, and shows government stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
Under the aegis of "..., This is peanuts, but given the billions of transactions every day, this could still raise an immense income," he said....,
So, government when faced with a need for money (how often does that happen?) sees that billions of e-mails and text messages are being sent and infers they can and should extract a tiny morsel of blood from their constituents, concluding, "it's only a tiny bit". This is insane.
Better served and directed would be transparency by the government: "This is how much money we need, and this is what it will cost each taxpayer..." At least then the people get a more honest appraisal of what government is doing.
Foisting micro-taxes and micro-debits is also an additional unnecessary burden upon the billing mechanism for an already too complex system of charges.
If this were proposed in the United States, it would be almost singularly enough of a reason to cast my vote against any representative who supported such a scheme.
Re:disingenuous, and shows government stupidity (Score:2)
I've got a better idea...
Maybe they should just take all those fractional cents from bank transactions and funnel them into an EU account. Nobody will miss them anyways, and it worked out great in both Superman III and Office Space.
P
Re:disingenuous, and shows government stupidity (Score:2)
You said: "single issue voters such as yourself are amoung the most intelligent members of our society".
Is there something inherently unclear about the word "almost"? I don't think I implied single issue voter, but congratulations for your "intelligent" inference. (And, speaking of intelligence, "amoung" should be "among". You're welcome.)
Wow, real dense here. (Score:2, Interesting)
Tax SMS? (Score:3, Insightful)
This makes no sense whatsoever. Taxing email makes a little sense if they're providing infrastructure, but they probably aren't. Taking SMS makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE however, because the cellphone companies provided 100% of the infrastructure except where they tie into the phone system.
I don't know if european phone system wiring was typically consumer-subsidized as it was here in the USA, but if it was, then the cellphone companies are probably already paying taxes in their bills for trunks, or whatever kind of connections they're using, and as such no additional tax should be levied.
Taxing SMS would be like taxing breathing - the EU has nothing to do with providing either one.
Re:Tax SMS? (Score:2)
Email tax? (Score:2)
Oh - and summary? The title says "EU" but the summary says "Italy". There's a slight difference between these two (I didn't RTFA but it really isn't clear FTFS).
Re:Email tax? (Score:2)
Silliness (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with a whit of sense has to know that under the current technology there is no way to tax email. If you want to tax the sender, there would have to be a way to absolutely identify the sender of the email, which there's not. If you're going to tax the recipient, then you need to provide recipients a way to decline to receive email that they don't want to pay taxes on (spam), which means you have to have a way to absolutely identify the sender of the email, and there's still not a way to do that.
Re:Silliness (Score:3, Insightful)
How silly of you, the EU already knows who you text-message and e-mail, through the data retention bill [bbc.co.uk] that was passed.
Makes one wonder if the idea is to tax the terrorists out of the EU.
Re:Silliness (Score:2)
So you're suggesting that taxes such as this would be a good thing if the mechanics of collecting them were all in place to do so in an accountable fashion? Whether you intend it or not, you're arguing the wrong points, and by doing so are actually promoting this idea.
Re:Silliness (Score:3, Insightful)
A fair point of discussion.
My comments were regarding the technical feasability of taxing email. Following those, begin to imagine the expense in money and time to make a hack-proof sender identification system for email (either with SMTP or
Re:Silliness (Score:2)
Right. I have scripts running on my old P90, that send debug info to a Postfix mail server running on the same computer. I wonder how they intend to tax me.
SMS, on the other hand, is already taxed, at least here in the Netherlands. I pay 19% VAT over my phone bill.
Re:Silliness (Score:2)
Can't be done? They could just talk to the NSA and AT&T! I'm sure the US would gladly help count all their email as long as they can read it too.
DDoS? (Score:2)
That would force US intelligence agencies to have to process zillions of spams every day. Wouldn't that amount to DDoS'ing?
Wait a minute, if they're already reading email (and you have to think they are), aren't they already reading zillions of spams a day? They must be employing some kind of Roswell-based spam filtering. Maybe the terrorists could get smart
tax the carrier (Score:3, Insightful)
But you can not really tax e-mail. People (i.e. internet providers, and through them people) will move to a different port, different protocol, icu, secret blogs, hidden web pages whatever. In the end you'd have to tax bytes sent on the net.
Re:tax the carrier (Score:2)
You already do this, since you pay your monthly fee, which has its tax already.
Oh, man! (Score:5, Funny)
NUTS! (Score:2)
Billions of people breath (Score:2)
Let's tax masturbation, maybe that will work better than this...
Double Tax (Score:2)
I am in favour of taxes such as VAT, which impose a flat rate on all goods and services where it would be too complex and cumbersome to evaluate the cost to the government of each individual services. I'm only in favour of additional, specific, taxes when it can be shown that the good or service does actually cost the government more money. Best example is alcohol. Prime target for excise duty
EU Needs American Republicians... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:EU Needs American Republicians... (Score:2)
Not likely. The problem with Republicans is when they cut taxes, they don't cut spending (or maybe that was the plan [wikipedia.org] all along). Putting it on the card isn't too fiscally sound.
Still have to figure out what to do with all the Democratic tax and spenders running wild in their absence.
Vote liber
How to track e-mails for the purpose of taxing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously though, how could you possibly track e-mail without the help of virtually every domain owner? How do you deal with webmail services? If I send an e-mail from a gmail account to a yahoo account then yes it's going over port 25 so it could theoretically be tracked by monitoring systems. But if you send a webmail from one gmail account to another or from one yahoo account to another then the only way you'd know about it is if Google, Yahoo, etc. starts tracking and accounting for all their e-mails.
And then there's the whole issue of spam. Spammers have control of tons of virus/trojan infected PC's that they regularly use to send out their spew. Are end users responsible for paying the taxes on spam sent unknowingly from their PC's? I could see individuals suing the government for knowing about infected PC's and doing nothing about it since those machines are now a source of tax revenue.
And what about personal domains, smaller companies, etc? Unless you force each and every domain owner worldwide to turn over mail logs you'd end up with huge discrepencies in the application of the taxes. Although I don't live in Europe I do own a few of my own domains and run my own mail server. It's used mostly for family accounts. If I lived in the EU then would I be required to keep accounting information and turn it over to the tax authorities? Could I charge them for the time involved in setting this up and regularly turning the logs over to them?
Re:How to track e-mails for the purpose of taxing? (Score:2)
You can do it [i.e. charge for mails sent through webmail services] but that would mean the end of every and all free webmail as we know it, since the webmail company could charge you the fee after all your mails. They would probably sell some prepaid plans, or discounts if you pay for longer periods, etc etc. I abso
This won't fly (Score:2)
Re:This won't fly (Score:2)
For the ability to send 100 SMS a month, I pay a flat 2,00 euro/month fee to my GSM operator. Do the math, it comes out to 2 cents per 1 SMS. If they are somehow thinking that a 75% increase in price will fly, they need their heads checked.
Size & source of suggested tax (Score:2, Informative)
I just have one thing to say (Score:2)
Numbers (Score:2)
Chain email (Score:2)
Let them try (Score:2)
But i wanna see them try taxing e-mail. E-mail is basically a piece of electronic information in a huge sea of information on the Internet, travels point to point and isn't guaranteed to pass through some "registration" server at EU, so basically it's undetectable from one central place.
An e-mail can happen at any point at any time, and the source can a
Re: (Score:2)
I can see it now (Score:2)
Case in point: (Score:2, Insightful)
once again, repeat after me... (Score:2)
A tax is 'money for a service or security provided.'
Bastard politicians like this seem to have not gotten the memo.
Technically, postage, a license (for nearly anything), a toll, a goverment-mandated surcharge of any sort, are all forms of tax, and in many cases, you get something back, even if it is in the form of regulation that (theoretically) makes it safer for you to conduct business. It boggles the mind that politicians can become aware of a transaction of any so
What a great idea! Not. (Score:2)
Everyone wants something for nothing. (Score:2)
I for one (and probably the only one) think this is a great idea. For starters, if I were to only get e-mails that the sender was willing to pay a cent for, my inbox would be a much better place. Taxes have to come from somewhere, and I don't see that communications is that much worse than the alternatives.
The general sentiment in this forum appears to be that taxes are evil, but around here the more they cut taxes the more things fall apart. We used to have a pretty nice city - now we can't afford any o
Lamassoure's explanation for the tax (Score:2)
--Rob
Enron Style of Raising $$$ (Score:2)
2. Govt Computers send tons of SPAM all over the web.
3. Italian govt bills itself for all of the sent eMails.
4. Mark those bills as income.
5. ???
6. Profit?
BS (Score:2)
If we're talking about e-mail and sms here, then this is nothing more than plain smelly bullshit. First, for most countries it was not the EU who built or paid for the network infrastructure. Second, it's not the EU who provides sms services or mobile network infrastructure, it's the cell companies, which pay their own share of taxes already (how much where or why is not the question here). Maybe we all should pay huge amounts
Some thought (Score:2)
Also: What does this offset?
I run my own mail server on the net which I used for email for friends and family. About 85 people have accounts. How the hell would they tax email sent from my machine to the EU, or
They really need to tax the connection to the internet, not the message. Better yet only tax spam. All and all taxes are a tool to cuase people to avoid someting. If something it popular, tax it, and it becomes a little less popular. I'm just not hap
Simple? (Score:2)
Simple? They must be smoking some good stuff over there.
How is this possibly simple? Use taxes do nothing but unnaturally constrain a particular use at the expense of the overall economy. Use taxes unnaturally constrain economic activity just so that polticians can take more of people's time and money without the politicians having to be the ones that are seen to take it out of your pocket. Simply cowardly politicians wanting a bigger slice
Already taxed. (Score:2)
And apart from a very few exceptions (environmental 'levies' and 'fees' etc.) there is a ban on double taxation.
So, no. Next.
No frontiers left, after Al and EU... (Score:3, Funny)
Did the EU invent texting before or after Al Gore invented the internet?
What the!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Two, we already pay sales tax on SMSs when the bill come through, and a stealth tax because phone companies need to claw back the money they spent on licencing next-gen radio bands though there most profitable area, SMS messages.
Three, theve got some fucking cheek "benefits engendered by the EU" lets see, apart from licencing bands to companies at insane prices, I don't think theve done anything... The benefit engendered by the EU, is we pay more for our SMSs, other than that you can get SMSs pretty much anywhere in the world where there's enough people to justify mobile phone coverage.
Why so much tax? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've recently found myself explaining to people why the US has added a tax onto their telephone bills to help fund the Spanish/American war, a war which ended over 108 years ago. Why is there an 18% tax on alcohol in Philadelphia to help fund WWII, and other silly rider taxes.
Which brings me to my point.
They'd tax air if they think they could get away with it.
Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential
employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
(x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been
shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
Re:meh (Score:2)
Oh, who am I kidding, no I don't.
What about the current taxing overlords? How do you feel about them?
Re:stupid (Score:2)
This is a government body we're talking about here, thus there is no direct correlation between the logic involved and the actions that will be taken.
Re:stupid (Score:2)
Re:heres an idea.. (Score:3, Interesting)
As for your idea about controlling spam though, I've always thought the way it should work is like this:
1) Do you mind if I contact you via this channel?
2) Nope, not if you mind paying me $x.xx every time you do so.
3) [Latest advert] [$x.xx] in MY bank account
Re:heres an idea.. (Score:2)
SMS is not designed to be a phone-equivilant of MSN Messenger. It's a phone - it's primary purpose is instant voice communication.
Secondly, I for one would find sharing my phone's address book with the taxman an intolerable intusion on privacy. Some might not agree with me on this, but I feel it's the kind of info that could be abused too easily.
Thirdly, what if I change my phone number and send a message to all my friends saying "Hey, this is
Re:both *are* taxed (Score:2)
Re:Let's make it even better! Lets tax SEX!!! (Score:2)
Re:Seems like I remember when taxes were... (Score:2)
Nonsense, taxes to pay for services (War, natural disaster, etc.) are commonly pulled from places where money "existed somewhere". Why do you think there is such a huge tax on alcohol, tobacco, gasoline, etc.? Do you really think that drunks cost the government that much money?
Re:So is the deficit. (Score:2)
and
[Subject: So is the deficit.]Nice try, Houdini.
Increasing state revenue through lower taxes does not, by itself, magically cause spending to increase. That requires legislation independent of that which lowered taxes in the first place.
It may be the nature of politicians to spend more when they receive more (and even more than t