OT: EU Ponders Tax on SMS, Email

[Guest guest]

Hey y'all,

 

We often read the Urban Rumor that the US Congress is considering taxing

our e-mails and such .. but to date, Urban Rumor is all it has been ..

the Congress says there is no intent now or in the future to tax us for

e-mail correspondence.

 

Not so for the European Union .. the below is not Urban Rumor. And its

not surprising because the EU has backed themselves into a corner (says

the experts) where their income will not be sufficient to cover their

expenses. Taking on new members is not helping the EU .. nor is the

idealistic goal of a highly taxed chicken in every pot .. but Social

Democracy is a difficult system to finance.

 

Can this EU Tax become law? Possibly. The EU is not governed by

elected representatives .. its governed by " committee " . The barrier to

enacting such a tax in the USA is that it would have to be voted on by

elected representatives .. and if we don't like the way John Smith,

R-NM, votes .. we might send John Smith home next election .. tell him

to find an honest job. Not true in the EU as the European Parliament is

not a democratic organization .. the members are not elected .. they are

all appointed .. and even more scary, this proposal is being reviewed by

a " European Parliament working group " . That translates to .. a bunch of

so-called experts who rarely know the realities of the issues they are

dealing with .. examples are the restrictions on Natural Products ..

Tony Barfield, Martin Watt and dozens of other folks in the UK have been

fighting these ridiculous decisions for some time now .. but its not an

easy road. :-(

 

Many Europeans are beginning to realize that what Winston Churchill

proposed years ago is not the direction the EU is heading. From the

below URL we can find:

 

> With a recent poll showing barely a half of Europeans see EU

> membership positively. "

 

http://sg.news./060526/3/415bs.html

 

And .. it appears that there will be no constitution anytime soon.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e492584a-ed1c-11da-a307-0000779e2340.html

 

If it appears that I might be sorta negative toward the EU, its probably

because its true. The original intent was great .. but I (like many

Europeans) think they have now created a monster and are having a

tough time controlling it .. or even feeding it.

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

-------------------

 

EU Ponders Tax on SMS, Email

 

Proposal may provide revenue for European Union but won’t stop spam.

May 26, 2006

 

Europeans would pay taxes for their emails and text messages in the

future, if a proposal made by a French member of the European

Parliament, Alain Lamassoure, finds backing in the European Union.

 

Mr. Lamassoure, a member of the center-right European People’s Party,

recently put forward an initiative to add a tax of about €0.015, just

under two U.S. pennies, on every SMS text message and €0.00001 cent on

every email sent.

 

" This is peanuts, but given the billions of transactions every day, this

could still raise an immense income, " said Mr. Lamassoure, according to

Reuters.

 

Indeed, the small levy would amount to a remarkable sum. In the United

Kingdom alone, 100 million text messages were sent every day in March,

according to the Mobile Data Association. At that rate, the tax would

bring the U.K. approximately $700 million for the entire year.

 

Across the entire span of 25 nations in the European Union, the SMS tax

could exceed $5 billion, assuming Britons provide a typical picture of

messaging activity across the E.U.

 

Taxing Spam

 

The number of emails sent every day from E.U. countries is more

difficult to count. Davis Ferris, senior analyst at Ferris Research,

estimates the daily total at 4 billion to 5 billion, not counting spam.

With the tax level proposed by Mr. Lamassoure, email would bring in only

a nominal income of $20 million a year.

 

However, if spam is taken into account, the number of emails increases

up to tenfold. But the E.U. should not count on them, as spam senders

will not be paying, said Des Cahill, chief executive of Habeas, a

company that certifies and monitors email.

 

" Introducing economic marginal cost on email will not solve or mitigate

the spam problem, " he said. " Spammers won't pay and you'll end up

forcing legitimate companies and small businesses to pay to use email. "

 

Mr. Lamassoure’s proposal is currently under review by a European

Parliament working group. It is one of several ideas European Union

lawmakers are putting forward in an effort to find new sources of income.

 

The E.U. budget is currently funded with value-added tax revenues,

import duties, and direct contributions from member states. The

structure of the funding will not remain the same, however, as member

states last December decided to change the way in which the E.U. is funded.

 

Some ideas for future funding include a single E.U. corporate tax base,

as well as taxes on airline tickets and oil companies.

 

Contact the writer: JAlkio

 

© 1993-2006 Red Herring, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

-----------------------

 

Call for Texts Tax to Raise Funds for EU

Times & Sunday Times, UK

 

EUROPEAN Union lawmakers are investigating a proposed tax on e-mails and

mobile phone text messages to help to fund the 25-member organisation.

 

A European Parliament working group is reviewing the idea, tabled by

Alain Lamassoure, a prominent French MEP and member of the centre-right

European People’s Party, the assembly’s largest group. He is proposing a

tax of about 1.5 euro cents (1p) on text messages and a 0.00001 cent

levy on every e-mail sent. " This is peanuts, but given the billions of

transactions every day, this could still raise an immense income, " he said.

 

The EU is funded through a combination of import duties, value added tax

revenues and direct contributions from member states — the " gross

national income resource " , calculated according to wealth.

 

After a battle over the present seven-year budget, agreed last December,

it was decided that the way in which the EU is funded should be changed,

with new proposals expected by 2008-09.

 

Other ideas include a tax on airline tickets and an extra levy on oil

companies.

 

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.