[Chapter-delegates] [Internet Policy] Taxing Internet services

[Alan Levin]

Hi,

In South Africa one has to buy a TV license in order to buy a TV set (incl a large monitor nowadays too)…  it's less than EU25 although as far as I know this goes towards paying for content…  keeping in mind that one can also legally download content in SA (as long as one does not distribute or sell such content, i.e. it is used for educational and non-commercial purposes) then one can play the content on a 'TV' which is licensed…

There is a special 'tax' for ISPs who are paying a telecommunications 'license fee' of between 0.15% and 0.35% of total revenue (depending on the tier of total revenue derived from licensed activities they earn), these are being increased and they are currently threatening to go over 1%… 

hth


Alan
ISOC-ZA


On 14 Nov 2016, at 3:02 PM, Eileen Gallagher <eileen.gallagher at inex.ie> wrote:

> 
> In Ireland we also have the TV Licence Fee of €160 per annum which is essentially a broadcasting tax for every house that has a TV. 
> Our Communications Minister in 2013 announced that they would extend this charge to a public service broadcasting charge which would be payable by every house in the country that had a device capable of receiving TV Content  (extending from not just TVs to smartphones, computers, games devices). The new minister for Communications announced earlier this year that he was scrapping this plan. Money from this charge goes to our national broadcaster, RTÉ to develop public service content. Unlike the BBC, Ireland's national TV organisation does have advertisements on TV and Radio. 
> We haven't had an internet tax here but ISP services attract 23% Value Added Tax ( VAT - sales tax)
> 
> Not sure if it's previously been mentioned on this thread but Viktor Orbán government in Hungary had over 100,000 on the streets protesting an internet tax in that country in 2014. Neelie Kroes, then of the EU Parliament said it was a 'terrible idea'. This is her spokesperson at that time covering off a lot of thoughts on it - http://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/video/commission-hungary-s-internet-tax-is-a-terrible-idea/
> 
> Eileen
> 
> 
> On 13/11/2016 12:46, vinton cerf wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 9:24 PM, Cynthia Khoo <cyn.khoo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> First, a couple points of clarification, to ensure everyone is on the same page--Mark mentioned above, but to reiterate: 
>> 
>> 1) Neither new tax that the Canadian government is considering is a general sales tax like HST, GST, etc., which already applies to other domestic goods and services. The first "tax" ("ISP tax") would be a special levy on ISPs for the purpose of contributing to the Canadian content system, like broadcasting distributors currently have to; and the second "tax" ("Netflix tax") would be a mandated fee that online content providers would have to contribute to that same Canadian content system. 
>> 
>> --------
>> This reminds me of the television tax in the UK that pays for BBC content as I understand it?
>> 
>> v