Outrage as telephone tax looms
MILLIONS could be hit by a new “telephone tax” under government plans to fund broadband for all.
Lord Carter’s long-awaited Digital Britain Report, published yesterday, outlined plans to slap a £6-a-year levy on households with a telephone line to help pay for universal broadband access.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance last night said it was “inappropriate” to ask consumers to pay for a service, regardless of whether they wanted it or not.
“It’s disgraceful to put another tax on people just for using the most basic of services,” said TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign manager Susie Squire. “It is not a lot of money. But it is yet another stealth tax and people will be unwilling to foot the bill”.
And shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt called the tax an “old economy solution to a new economy problem”.
Meanwhile, the BBC reacted angrily to plans to use the £200m-a-year it was given for digital switchover to fund regional news programming on commercial rivals such as ITV.
And local newspaper owners will be disappointed that the report has not recommended the relaxation of merger rules, which could have led to scores of paper-saving mergers across the industry.
There was also frustration that the report failed to provide a concrete solution to Channel 4’s funding problem.