Portugal Is Considering a "Terabyte Tax" 353
An anonymous reader writes "As a proposal to avoid becoming the 'next Greece', a Portuguese opposition party has proposed a tax on storage. The party claims that the tax will not effect the average citizen and is mostly levied at business users, but internal storage on mobile phones means a 64GB iPhone could be €32 more expensive. From the article: 'The proposal would have consumers paying an extra €0.2 per gigabyte in tax, almost €21 extra per terabyte of data on hard drives. Devices with storage capacities in excess of 1TB would pay an aggravated tax of 2.5 cents per GB. That means a 2TB device will in fact pile on €51.2 in taxes alone (2.5 cents times 2048GB). External drives or “multimedia drives” as the proposed bill calls them, in capacities greater than 1TB, can be taxed to the tune of 5 cents per gigabyte, so in theory, a 2TB drive would cost an additional €103.2 per unit (5 cents times 2048GB)."
Old & Inaccurate (Score:5, Informative)
It was not a proposal to avoid becoming 'the next Greece'. It was a proposal to "help" artists.
In reality it was just another levy (we have several) to benefit some corrupt goons on a local "rights" association. And as you might guess it, they don't help artists that much. Just their pockets.
It's old because the parliament shot it down after an active online campaign by internet activists and a couple of politicians with common sense.
Meanwhile, in Italy (Score:3, Informative)
the government has considered taxing SMSs by 0.02€ each. (This is not a joke)
Re:This proposal was rejected. (Score:0, Informative)
"The 50% of the population that don't pay taxes" actually pay a larger portion of their income in taxes than the other half... just not federal income taxes, because they don't have any residual income to tax.
The only people who truly don't pay any tax are the ones rich enough to hire the best accountants.
Re:€0.2 = €0,02? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Spain, Italy and Greece (Score:1, Informative)
Italy has already had this since 2010. No one can beat us on taxes. Any other country is purely at an amatorial level. We do not have it only on pure storage, but also on items containing storage, like phones.
And since we are the real masters of futile taxation, the earnings do not even go to the state, to fund the deficit or to support welfare. The earnings go to support the music industry.
See http://www.tecnophone.it/2010/03/18/la-nuova-tassa-s-i-a-e-in-vigore-dal-23-marzo-2010-su-cellulari-e-apparecchi-informatici/
Google translate can probably be your friend here.
Re:Outdated (Score:4, Informative)
It was not completely discarded, it was canceled after all the criticism [google.pt], but they already said they're revising the proposal and will present it again.
Re:1tB != 1TB (Score:2, Informative)
That's not the problem. The problem is that you consider that kind of bullshit is acceptable. Here in the old continent when you say I'm selling this for 500€ it means that you actually have to sell it for 500€. Not for 600€+taxes+mandatory tip minus coupon-filling bonus for limited number of people who fill some bscure criteria. You'd get sued for that, it's considered fraud.