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Comment by ilugaslifg | Hacker News Reader

The term "TV License" is 1000% more offensive and outrageous, to my Canadian ears, than "TV Tax" would be.

A "license" is a permit from the government to do or use something, and carries the implication that it's something that can be denied.

I know it 100% functions as a tax and not in any sense as a license. And the idea of requiring government permission to have a TV carries less weight in the internet age than it would have in the past. But the wording alone still makes my blood boil. It sounds like something you'd find in North Korea.

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> The term "TV License" is 1000% more offensive and outrageous, to my Canadian ears, than "TV Tax" would be.

>A "license" is a permit from the government to do or use something, and carries the implication that it's something that can be denied.

In Canada you can't have certain basic freedoms, even without a licence. (Certain drawn pornography or even dolls are examples). I don't mean to say that the situation in the UK is any better; I agree that the "TV license" phrasing is bad.

It goes to show that arguably many such countries (Canada, Aus, NZ, UK) have no libertarian (by this I mean civil liberties) core or basis, as the US, I would argue, does.

> I know it 100% functions as a tax

You wish. Taxes are mostly proportional to the payer's income, or wealth, or to the value of some owned good. Instead, so called "tv licenses" are fixed, such that the poorest citizen, owner of a 10inch tv found in the trash bin, is bound to pay as much as the richest taxpayer, with his multi wall-sized home cinema devices.

In this respect it works exactly as the annual subscription to a TV service (it's actually called "subscription" in some countries) and it's clearly a remnant of the times when TVs were rare, expensive objects that were in themselves a proof of the wealth of their owners.

You're right, that is much more rightfully offensive than just the naming problem.

We have a similar bit of bullshit in British Columbia, where government health insurance is paid through premiums, administered outside of the tax system (which is annoying as hell, and doesn't happen in other Canadian provinces), which are progressive only up until $30k (£18k) annual income, and fixed after that at $900 (£550) /person/year. Which is 3% of $30k/year, but 1% of $100k/year, etc.

... actually laid out like that and looking at the inhuman shitshow in the US, I think I might withdraw my complaint.

But, back to naming because obviously that is what really matters, a regressive tax[0] is still a tax.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax

We have a similar bit of bullshit in British Columbia, where government health insurance is paid through premiums, administered outside of the tax system

Those premiums come no where near actually covering the cost of government health insurance.

Ontario has a similar scheme - although administered inside of the tax system - which brings in approximately $3.5B from health premiums. The province spends over $50B on health and long-term care.[0] The health "premium" should really be called a surtax because that is what it is.

Looking at BC's provincial budget[1], which plans to cut them, MSP premiums will bring in just over $2.5B in revenue this year. This is inline with a previous year's forecast[2]. According to both of these sources', BC spends over $17B on health care.

Its 2017 budget claims that BC is the only province which charges health premiums - I suspect that this refers to the method which BC uses to charge people. In Ontario, the "health premium" is collected along with provincial income taxes.

[0] http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2016/ch3b.... Scroll down to table 3.22 for expenses

[1] http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2017/bfp/2017_Budget_and_Fiscal_Pl... Table 1.7

[2] http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2015/bfp/2015_budget_and_fiscal_pl... Table 1.7

I'm from the UK and it's not something that has ever bothered me so possibly a cultural thing.

That said I don't have a TV License anyway since I have no requirement for one, the few bits of TV I do watch are handily covered by Netflix.

Broadcast TV is horrible the few times I watch it when I'm at the GF's, after 4 years without it you forget just how bad.

Ironically I consume vastly more content from the BBC via their radio content (BBC Radio 4 is heroin) which is all free without a license anyway.

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