5/14/2006
Reason #34,564 not to move to the EU
The EU "government" is entertaining plans to possibly tax SMS and e-mail. Alain Lamassoure, an EU MP from the governmentally challenged France introduced this spectacularly bad idea. Now, why do I say this is "spectacularly bad"? for several good reasons:
- At least one of the major international carriers, (Deutsche Telekom) is already partially government owned, which means that customers would be charged taxes multiple times for the same message.
- Making each SMS more expensive to use would be bad not just for the consumers, but for businesses as many Europeans use SMS more than they do regular email.
- Wireless carriers earn a significant portion of their revenues from sms, and as some of them also own ISPs many of the would face a two front assault on their revenue as any new tax, especically in addition to the recent regulation driven roaming fee reductions, would certainly reduce revenue in a stagnating industry.
- Taxing something as difficult to manage on an individual basis as SMS and e-mail where spam is prevalent raises the ethical question of how you decide which messages to charge for.
