You must pay for the right to receive electromagnetic waves which are passing through your body 24/7, whether you like it or not.
Seems legit.
Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
11–20 of 75 posts
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#12I think it is only a matter of time before the UK moves to something like this. We have TV licensees to fund the BBC but with more and more of the content that they produce being available on-line though iPlayer things will have to change. I believe the BBC's charter is up for renegotiation in about four years and it would be the perfect time to make the change.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#13The Swiss do the same ("Billag") to the tune of 460 CHF per year for radio and tv. I basically see it as a tax for a public system as there seems absolutely no way of wiggling your way out of it. E.g even if you don't have kids, you will also pay for public schooling.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#14How is the tax actually/to be charged though?
You used to have to show ID and provide an address when you bought a TV, then it would go into a "these households have a TV" database, and you would receive a yearly bill.
The extension is that it no longer applies only to TVs, but to PCs and tablets as well.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#15It's not a tax. It's a fee, required to pay by law to fund independent channels of opinion free from government and/or private funded influence. 200 eur a year is quite cheap for what you get. http://www.radiotjanst.se/en/Radio-and-TV-fee/
Unless you have no interest in watching the programs. Then it's horribly expensive
The point is that you in theory (!!!) get media this way that do not depend on advertisement and are thus more independent from industry influence. This in turn leads to you being able to profit from this even if you do not watch the programs and/or listen to the radio, simply because this injects a different kind of media into the media landscape which in turn other media interact with (newspapers, websites, blogs etc. etc.).
Whether this works in practise is up for debate and subject to opinion, but I do think that the general idea is commendable.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#16It's not a tax. It's a fee, required to pay by law to fund independent channels of opinion free from government and/or private funded influence. 200 eur a year is quite cheap for what you get. http://www.radiotjanst.se/en/Radio-and-TV-fee/
Unless you have no interest in watching the programs. Then it's horribly expensive
I'm in that category. I'm in American living in Sweden. In the US I watched very little TV. Here in Sweden, I don't at all. Most of the video I watch, outside of stupid-internet-clips, are recorded meeting lectures, like from PyCon. (What can I say. I'm boring.)
I have a small software business, which I run out of my home. Sometimes I pull down multi-GB data sets. So it's not like I easily downgrade my network to sub-TV speeds. I wonder if I can just block svt.se at the router level, so that way I have no devices which can contact these shows I'll never watch.
Now, I do realize the logic of having news which is independent of the advertisers. But I would rather just pay for it through (unavoidable) taxes rather than through a licensing system and all of its attendant overhead of license inspectors, forms to fill out, etc.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#17You are forced to fund a propaganda box.
Dear god.
And some people consider this a norm(and even a good thing).
Of course entity that is dependent on public funding will protect its image, will fight for its long lasting survivability and lobby to enforce its funding by law.
ze irony.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#18It's not a tax. It's a fee, required to pay by law to fund independent channels of opinion free from government and/or private funded influence. 200 eur a year is quite cheap for what you get. http://www.radiotjanst.se/en/Radio-and-TV-fee/
That's over $20 per month. That would buy several premium content subscriptions for "traditional media" such as The New Yorker, Netflix, Hulu Plus, etc. and quite a bit more "new media" content.
For some of the content, it will be difficult to make the case that traditional media cost structures have to be maintained.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you have no interest in watching the programs. Then it's horribly expensive
The point is that you in theory (!!!) get media this way that do not depend on advertisement and are thus more independent from industry influence. This in turn leads to you being able to profit from this even if you do not watch the programs and/or listen to the radio, simply because this injects a different kind of media into the media landscape which in turn other media interact with (newspapers, websites, blogs e…
> The point is that you in theory (!!!) get media this way that do not depend on advertisement and are thus more independent from industry influence.
Instead you get a media-station which is entirely dependent on continued blessing from the government. So much better.
That severely limits how impartial it gets to be, and the similar system we have in Norway has consistently proven to provide media-coverage leaning further to the left than the general population does.
It's not a disaster by any means, but I wouldn't argue it's "impartial" either. And I can definitely see why some people would chose not to fund it if given the option.
Re: Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you have no interest in watching the programs. Then it's horribly expensive
The point is that you in theory (!!!) get media this way that do not depend on advertisement and are thus more independent from industry influence. This in turn leads to you being able to profit from this even if you do not watch the programs and/or listen to the radio, simply because this injects a different kind of media into the media landscape which in turn other media interact with (newspapers, websites, blogs e…
In theory yes. What you get in reality is a left-wing group of journalists concentrated in a very small well-off area in Stockholm that does not in any way represent the population at large. Keep in mind that the employees of SVT are even more leftist than the average journalist. Which is fine, as long as I don't have to pay for it.
This means that I can't trust SVT to deliver "independent" news more than I can trust any other media source in the country. It does not matter at all to me that they are financed by force instead of ads.