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Comment by Udik | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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

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