It generally amazes me when you gaze around at Europe (beyond Germany) and note the naive nature of society. This morning....Hungary came up and announced some interest in a new taxation gimmick. It's an internet tax on IP providers.....roughly 60-US cents (roughly 50-cents in Euro) for each gigabyte of data traffic.
Naturally, this got some Hungarians peppy because they know that if you pass such a tax....it's not the company that ends up inventing the money.....it's the public that pays the tax into the side pocket of the IP company.
The term that a capitalist would use....sin-tax, fits appropriately into this. You need to find something that people can't live without....likes smokes, booze, gasoline, airline tickets, etc. We've reached the point now where internet usage fits this sin-tax scheme perfectly. We download TV programs, video-clips, and music. If you took the average sixteen year old kid and looked at gigabyte usage.....you can figure at least one gigabyte per day, so you can figure roughly $15 a month as a minimum. Over a year, that's going to add up to a minimum of $120.
Where this goes? The news people will only say that a anti-tax crowd are already forming and hoping to knock this down immediately. Some political party will come out in opposition, and then chat forums will start to talk about this daily. What were the tax revenue folks thinking when they invented this idea? I'm not sure. Maybe it was some non-computer literate guy, or just someone thinking sin-tax schemes that might work.
No comments:
Post a Comment