News - £6 per year broadband tax to go ahead

[Singh400]

I say get this over and done with ASAP... tax an extra £10 per month and get fibre to the home by 2012.

At least then we will get something really worthwhile out of it and be pioneers in europe, leading the way into the future.

I would be all for that. IF and only if the government could guarantee that it would be injected into UK broadband/internet technologies. However, a figure like £183m is more likely to disappear into the black hole that is Whitehall.

[Nikomus]

I say get this over and done with ASAP... tax an extra £10 per month and get fibre to the home by 2012.

At least then we will get something really worthwhile out of it and be pioneers in europe, leading the way into the future.

Paying a £10 tax for a ~£12 service? Bugger that. Especially as there is no end date for this initiative. When would the network be sufficiently improved to cancel it? Probably never, as newer and faster connections become "must haves" and the cash is secretly creamed off for other purposes. It will only go as a vote gaining ploy by some future governing party.

As a student, money can get reasonably tight, but the internet is a necessity both for study and entertainment. In my flat the landlord wasn't overly keen on ripping up a courtyard for Virgin, so BT it was. If the government wants to tax something it should be the ridiculous £120 connection fee BT charge to reconnect a line which has been dormant for all of two weeks.

I agree with Saracen's posts - excellently written and took me back to my A-level economics days.
If the government sees broadband as so important it should do two things:

1.Renationalise BT so that a private company is not expected to provide public goods.

2.Stop dishing it out free to all the scallies on the dole.

[pp05]

As far I know this isn't about upgrading everyones home connection. This is merely to bring those in the countryside up to scratch.

The worst part about this tax is that it will be included as part of your regular monthly charge rather than seperately. Which would then mean you pay VAT on it. A tax on a tax.

[daniel_owen_uk]

I saw a show about the postal service the other day and it reminded me of this.

Basically in the postal service for anti competition reasons Royal Mail has had to open up the last mile delivery to other distribution services.

Obviously they are going to pick up the most lucrative services (as did LLU), and make some money. But then leave royal mail delivering to the highlands of scotland and all the costly addresses.

And then the government will have to tax us all to make up the losses.

Same thing happened here, LLU came along, brought a better service, but isn't feeding the profits back into the infrastructure.

[Saracen]

.... A tax on a tax.

Rather like paying Income Tax on what you've already paid in National Insurance you mean?

It's a time-honoured trick commonplace to successive British governments.

[AGTDenton]

I get a 3.5 MB service, this allows me to browse, download and stream music at the same time. For me this is plentiful, though I feel slightly ripped off when it says its an up to 24MB line as Im only getting roughly 15% of that. You wonder why they bother offering it when they know hardly anyone will get it.

For £19.99/month this includes all my landline calls anytime, my line rental and ADSL. So I cant grumble too much.

All ISP's should be fitting this tax not the consumers, after all they are the ones that will benefit from more customers. I dont recall the mobile phone operators wanting a tax to put their masts up.
Any company reporting billions of pounds in profit should be made to contribute.

BT has net debt of £11,060m, up from £10,175m on 31 December 2007. ®

I dont know why the government doesnt just get on with taxing the air we breathe rather than waiting for them to have filtered in every other tax possible.
Balls to labour, I will not be voting for either of the 3 major parties. I want to live in a modern 2010, not a stale 1825.

[oolon]

As long as the money is used to fund a radical overhaul of the current PSTN network, I'll not be complaining if I have to have 1 mars bar a month less so that I can get a nice 100/200 Mbps connection at home in the future so that we can catch up to the faster speeds offered by other countries out there.

More likely it will fund law makers to pass regulations requiring telecoms companies to do the work... We already pay VAT on the services, this is just the start this government has proved that NI is just income tax. With the added bonus that a "1/2p" increase make an employee 1p more expensive to employ, so they can push rates up alot faster.

[oolon]

2.Stop dishing it out free to all the scallies on the dole.

As someone who has been made redundant 5 times in my 15 years of work, and had 5 temp jobs, when I was earning money often was paying HIGH RATE TAX only to find the next year I payed ZERO, I really resent the attitude of a lot of people here who seem to believe many people are on the dole because they are too lazy to work. The dole is one of the most depressing things I ever done. Its not enough to live on, however I payed into the system heavily why is it so unreasonable to have something back in a bad time?

I am now in employment again took a 65% pay cut too, in a place with statuary minimum benefits, 1 minute late... no you can't make up the time... you can have your pay docked though!

[ilh]

A lot of people on the dole are too lazy to work, the scallies. You might not be one of them and I aplaud you for giving a damn and trying it's just a shame all the chavs out there aren't like you.