[Retired Tech]

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers are investigating a proposed tax on emails and mobile phone text messages as a way to fund the 25-member bloc in the future.

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.

Lamassoure, a member of Jacques Chirac's UMP party, is proposing to add a tax of around 1.5 cents (0.8 pence) on text or SMS messages and a 0.00001 cent levy on every email sent.

"This is peanuts, but given the billions of transactions every day, this could still raise an immense income," he said.

http://uk.news.yahoo...mails-smss.html

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Taxing services like email and sms sounds like a bad idea to me. To me these services are like the sun. No costs but very useful.

Let's hope they also think this is a crappy idea.

Although, it does depend on what the tax money would be used for.

[emery]

Taxing services like email and sms sounds like a bad idea to me. To me these services are like the sun. No costs but very useful.

Let's hope they also think this is a crappy idea.

Although, it does depend on what the tax money would be used for.

[frantique]

How would they collect it? .... Get your ISP to collect and pay them? Surely this would be a nightmare for ISPs. Same for the mobile phone companies.

Next thing we'll be taxed for breathing! Lucky I practised holding my breath a lot when I was a kid. Always knew I did it for a good reason!

[emery]

Haha good one . I think the SMS tax would just be done by making the price higher for sending a SMS. Like from 3 to 5 cents.

No idea how they would do it for email though.

[daniel_c]

im just glad i live in australia

[s2006]

Lamassoure is french, the french LOVE taxing as we and their people know...the french embodies the EU according to chirac.... so this new taxing proposal is very fitting of them
interesting post!

Edited by s2006, 06 July 2006 - 11:16 AM.