New £6 Phone Line Tax To Fund Super Fast Broadband

Get ready to be stung in the pocket with another tax by the British government. Every household in the UK with phone line could soon be hit with a £6 per year tax to pay for the planned Superfast broadband – also known as 4G.

Gordon Brown claimed that faster internet access was now ‘an essential service as indispensable as electricity, gas and water’. The creation of this new tax follows the publication of the Digital Britain report into the future of internet, television, radio and telephone provision in in the UK.

The document, overseen by outgoing communications minister Lord Carter, also proposed that the BBC should share the licence fee with its commercial rivals – mainly ITV. And from 2013, £6 from every licence fee could be used to pay for programmes such as regional news and children’s shows on other channels, which currently have to fund themselves.

However, it was the plan to charge everyone with a fixed phone line an extra £6 a year that has caused the most controvery amongst commentators. Individuals of all ages – even those who might not even know what ’superfast broadband’ means – will have to find the extra cash every year until 2017.

Over a seven-year period the new tax is expected to raise £1.05bn from the public. The fee will be imposed on operators who will then have to pass it on to there customers in the bill. You will not be able to opt out of the charge, although there will be exemptions for poor households on ’social telephony schemes’ and some charitable organisations – that big of them. Gordon Brown yesterday pledged to try and make Britain the ‘digital capital of the world’, claiming that investment in the IT and communication industries could ‘underpin our emergence from recession to recovery’.

But critics called the broadband tax ‘bizarre’ and said the Government had ‘blundered’ with the ‘invasive’ regulations and higher taxes. While it has been noted that industries such as the internet and mobile communications have been able to flourish in the past without a individual tax on these services. There are also fears that the cost of the plans could spiral (similar to the London 2012), this would mean the British public will have to bail out the scheme if it fall into trouble – sounds familiar and very likely. The Conservatives believe that even with the new tax there will be a £ 2.5bn shortfall in funding of superfast internet across the UK.