Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet | Hacker News Reader

Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet

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33 pointstimgluz73 comments

Norwegian here, our National Broadcaster is planning to introduce the same here. Here's a story from today about it (in Norwegian): http://www.aftenposten.no/digital/Norge-vurderer-TV-lisens-p...

I'm fine with a TV-license fee, but if they're going to charge it for everyone who owns either a tablet, cellphone, computer or TV (which is basically 99,9% of households) they might just abandon their massive fee bureacracy and get the money through the government budget instead. It'll save a lot of money, especially if everyone is basically forced into paying it (regardless if they actually own a television set or not) anyway.

How do Norwegians feel about the cost of their licence fee? Are people generally happy with the quality of output and services provided by the publicly-funded broadcaster?

I'm in the UK, and the BBC licence fee is approx 175 euros. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark all have more expensive license fees. Obviously, the UK has a much larger population than Norway, Sweden or Denmark so the BBC gets more revenue.

Generally speaking, there is broad support for the BBC license fee. Given the BBC's long history, many people in the UK see them as a cultural institution rather just a broadcaster - which may sound strange to people outside the UK. Of course there are plenty of people who dislike the BBC in the UK. And then there are lots of people who like the BBC but are irritated by many of its programmes or behaviour.

Germany had this for some years. The fee is almost the same as in Sweden. I feel ripped off by this, its a remainder of a time when TV-Broadcasting was still so expensive that only public founded institutions could provide it. These ages are long gone. Until beginning of this year it was actually relatively easy to avoid paying it. You just did never answer one of their letters and took care who you opened the door. Now its tax-like for every household. What disgusts me most there is almost no control over the budgets they just collect whatever they want. The politicians that are assigned to the advisory board do nothing, cause they fear bad publicity by the channels (and also want to secure some well paying jobs for friends).

Personally, what angers me most about our system in Germany is that we have to pay the GEZ public television fee for internet devices, but only selected content is available for streaming online. When I want to watch an old Tatort, I still have to shell out 20 EUR for a DVD box.

We also have it hear in Denmark. It's called »medielicens« and technically not a tax, but a licence fee (BBC subscribers will understand). It is also required even if you do not use any of DR's services (DR being 'Danish Broadcasting'), but own any form of media device. Most people I know do not pay it, however.

Wait what? How do you not pay it? Just throw out the bills they send you?

"Oh why hello, thanks for calling, no, sorry, I do not own a TV, computer or tablet - I often spend time at my friends home and uses his computer and TV."

This is how people avoid it in Sweden. However, the stores are obliged to report in when you purchase a TV, but all of these things can be avoided by simple lies ("I gave the TV to my friend for his birthday"), and many do so.

Since they are not the government, they cannot legally gain entrance to your property (actually, neither can the government without a warrant, but they cannot get a warrant either). They send you a letter, asking you to sign up to pay the media licence or sign a declaration that you own no such devices.

The declaration - however - is legally binding and there are huge fines for breaking such a declaration. However, they must be able to prove that you do actually have such devices, by entering your property. In most cases, they don't really bother, though.

Seems like this could get me in trouble. Also I don't remember signing any document I just started receiving the bills. I live in a dormitory so maybe that somehow affects the issue.

To clarify (dane here):

Everybody with an internet connection of any sort with a bandwith of at least 256kbps must pay the fee. The argument is that they can access dr.dk (danish public service television channel), and the content they provide for no additional fee. Obviously owning a TV will cause the fee as well.

It is a fact that almost all danish households must pay the fee, which especially hurts low-income households, such as those of students; the fee is the same no matter the household composition.

There is no good practical reason for not financing danish public service by increasing income tax ever so slightly.

You don't want to watch TV ?

We don't care. We will make you, whether you want it or not.

And we will charge you for the privilege - having to subsidize the things you dislike, what a cool idea.

(I guess I would have to give up my computers if I lived in Sweden)

EDIT: Downvoted already? Whatever. I will not willingly subsidize government propaganda.

There are those who really believe that because something is funded by taxes, that it will be impartial. By this thinking, the old Radio Moscow was perfectly legit. After all, it was free of corporate influence, and the need to cater to advertisers. I wouldn't doubt that some of the same people would like Pravda-style, government-funded newspapers.

It's not a tax. It's a fee, required to pay by law to fund independent channels of opinion free from government and/or private funded influence.

200 eur a year is quite cheap for what you get.

http://www.radiotjanst.se/en/Radio-and-TV-fee/

Unless you have no interest in watching the programs. Then it's horribly expensive

The point is that you in theory (!!!) get media this way that do not depend on advertisement and are thus more independent from industry influence. This in turn leads to you being able to profit from this even if you do not watch the programs and/or listen to the radio, simply because this injects a different kind of media into the media landscape which in turn other media interact with (newspapers, websites, blogs etc. etc.).

Whether this works in practise is up for debate and subject to opinion, but I do think that the general idea is commendable.

> The point is that you in theory (!!!) get media this way that do not depend on advertisement and are thus more independent from industry influence.

Instead you get a media-station which is entirely dependent on continued blessing from the government. So much better.

That severely limits how impartial it gets to be, and the similar system we have in Norway has consistently proven to provide media-coverage leaning further to the left than the general population does.

It's not a disaster by any means, but I wouldn't argue it's "impartial" either. And I can definitely see why some people would chose not to fund it if given the option.

Again, I see the overall goal as having a balanced media system. I wrote in a reply further down about the same thing. A balanced system does not mean each element has to be balanced (or "impartial"). A government-funded media station still counteracts a commercially funded media outlet on a much more fundamental functional basis than just political ideology.

Both public and private media are in my opinion necessary parts of an overall functioning and thus independent media system. This system, like every complex system, is only able to achieve "impartiality" from a certain point of observation, in this case that of the comparing listener/reader/viewer basing judgement on multiple outlets.

In theory yes. What you get in reality is a left-wing group of journalists concentrated in a very small well-off area in Stockholm that does not in any way represent the population at large. Keep in mind that the employees of SVT are even more leftist than the average journalist. Which is fine, as long as I don't have to pay for it.

This means that I can't trust SVT to deliver "independent" news more than I can trust any other media source in the country. It does not matter at all to me that they are financed by force instead of ads.

Just because they lean left does not mean they are not independent. Independence does not necessitate impartiality. The point still stands that even a left-leaning media adds value to the overall media system by balancing the overall media system. That does not mean every single media outlet has to be balanced.

Just because the given media outlet's political views do not coincide with yours does not negate its cultural function.

I certainly disagree with the BBC regarding a number of political issues, yet I am still glad it exists.

Then why not just pay for it out of taxes like Finland does? That seems cheaper overall than a license fee system with inspectors. And if your view is valid, then that means the small (<3%) of the people with no TV and no internet are getting a social benefit without paying for it.

Because if it's funded by the Government then it becomes a Government TV station. Using a 'BBC' method where there is a law requiring the license fee to be paid and allows for a third party to collect it and deliver the money direct to the broadcaster. This design can loosen the influence the government has on the channel. Whether you agree with the outcome or not, the idea is that the BBC's of this world are not government spokes-channels.

In which case you believe the Finnish Broadcasting Company is now a government spokes-channel, no?

Does it not make a difference that it's set up as an hypothecated tax, where revenue from the Yle tax is dedicated to go to Yleisradio?

I'm in that category. I'm in American living in Sweden. In the US I watched very little TV. Here in Sweden, I don't at all. Most of the video I watch, outside of stupid-internet-clips, are recorded meeting lectures, like from PyCon. (What can I say. I'm boring.)

I have a small software business, which I run out of my home. Sometimes I pull down multi-GB data sets. So it's not like I easily downgrade my network to sub-TV speeds. I wonder if I can just block svt.se at the router level, so that way I have no devices which can contact these shows I'll never watch.

Now, I do realize the logic of having news which is independent of the advertisers. But I would rather just pay for it through (unavoidable) taxes rather than through a licensing system and all of its attendant overhead of license inspectors, forms to fill out, etc.

In Denmark, DR ("Danish Broadcasting") started building a concert hall some years ago - for the modest price of €430 million.

When the construction was done, the bill landed at €670 million. That's your TV license money at work right there.

That's over $20 per month. That would buy several premium content subscriptions for "traditional media" such as The New Yorker, Netflix, Hulu Plus, etc. and quite a bit more "new media" content.

For some of the content, it will be difficult to make the case that traditional media cost structures have to be maintained.

Exactly! A varied collection of premium content from various sources will together form a much broader and more accurate picture than trusting "independent" media with your life.

I suspect it depends on what the offering is. If I had to choose between every commercial TV channel and the BBC for the rest of my life, the BBC would get my vote without hesitation (assuming it maintained its current level of quality).

The offering is a different perspective.

>It's not a tax. It's a fee, required to pay by law to fund independent channels of opinion free from government and/or private funded influence.

Distinction without a difference. Would I be wrong if I tried to argue that an income tax is not a tax, but rather, a fee required by law to fund public schools, bureaucrats, and roads?

A fee is appropriated, a tax is not. Your government can do what it wants with taxes (e.g. fund wars instead of building roads) but it cannot decide that the radio/television fee will be used for road building (without changing the law).

Whether the term used is "tax" or a "fee", it won't make a difference to the pocket that just got picked. If the difference between those terms comes down to the whim of government and its laws, then it remains out of your hands anyway.

Every government appropriation is a change in the law. The government passes a bill every year that dictates how money will be divided amongst different agencies and departments. So, there is no way to appopriate tax dollars without a change in the law.

In Denmark the price is around €320. So that's around €25 per month for a service I don't use.

How can you say that public broadcasting is "free from government", when this is the very entity that chooses whether to uphold the laws that provide funding for these stations? For public broadcasting, offending the government is quite literally biting the hands that feeds you.

We have this tax in Germany as well. They just don't call it a tax, but every household and company has to pay 216 Euro/year.

They used to bind it to having a computer/radio/tv/mobile phone (with radio/internet) but now you even have to pay if you don't own any of those.

Same here in Italy. Here they tax for any apparatus that is meant or adaptable to receive tv or radio signals. So basically anything with a graphical display.

I think it is only a matter of time before the UK moves to something like this. We have TV licensees to fund the BBC but with more and more of the content that they produce being available on-line though iPlayer things will have to change. I believe the BBC's charter is up for renegotiation in about four years and it would be the perfect time to make the change.

I got rid of my TV licence when it came up for renewal at Christmas, and just watch on-demand content via iPlayer now. (Well, that was all I did before, but I've removed the little-used TV receiver from my house now.)

I can see them charging for computers in the future - but how would it work? Would they suddenly charge every office, for instance? We have an office with no TV but full of computers. None are used for TV viewing, live or otherwise. You just don't watch TV at work. It sounds like it could make them a lot of extra money!

I thought they already technically did. Don't you need to have a license to watch iplayer in an office? Ah, found a link, you don't need it for on demand, just live streaming, but stil...

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_tv_progs/...

I actually think this is pretty reasonable - everybody I know consumes BBC content in some form (most of them without paying the license fee) and it's a small price to pay for the presence of an impartial news source.

I agree with this. 9 years ago when I moved to the UK (from New Zealand) I didn't quite understand the paying for the license thing. Now I realise that the BBC provides so much useful content that I'm more than happy to pay for it.

I'd have to agree.

We don't watch live to air anymore, but we do use the heck out of iPlayer.

When it came around to renewing the license a few months ago, we made the conscious decision to renew it, even though we legally didn't need to (no sat receiver, no aerial).

I know a lot of people will call us stupid for doing so, but I'm also convinced that the BBC will lobby (or whatever they need to do) for changes to the licensing laws once the UK officially is out of the economic danger zone.

I would do the same. We may as a country complain allot about some of our institutions like the BBC and the NHS but relay they do an amazing job and should be supported.

> I know a lot of people will call us stupid for doing so, but I'm also convinced that the BBC will lobby (or whatever they need to do) for changes to the licensing laws once the UK officially is out of the economic danger zone.

I'm not entirely sure where you've got this idea from, but you do realise that the bulk of the BBC's funding comes from the licence fee[1], and that TVL (the organisation that sends nasty letters through the post if you don't have TV[2]) is part of the BBC[3], right?

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...

[2] - http://www.bbctvlicence.com/

[3] - http://www.televisionlicence.info/tvl/who

I don't. I had an EyeTV card but the licensing for the software is despicable and after losing the serial number I couldn't get it reactivated after rebuilding the same Mac. I used to use BBC iPlayer instead but I don't these days, as I use a VPN and Hulu or similar sites for 80% of what I want to watch.

There's no such thing as an impartial news source[1][2][3][4][5][6]. Your best bet is to get a range and understand the biases involved. I'm not saying that bias is a bad thing with the BBC, but understanding it's existence is as important as understanding biases in the Guardian and Telegraph's reporting when it comes to consuming news.

[1] - http://biasedbbc.org/

[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC

[3] - http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1953/exclusive_bbc_lef...

[4] - http://bbcinstitutionalbias.blogspot.co.uk/

[5] - http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/media-culture/the-problem-of-b...

[6] - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/11/bbc-libe...

How can an organization be impartial if the members of its board are appointed by the government and its funding is renegotiated every year?

We saw in 2003 what happens when the BBC disagrees with the government. The government wins. A minor mistake by a single reporter was excuse enough to get the entire BBC leadership fired for its criticism of the Iraq war.

Apparently impartiality means to shut up when the Prime Minister lies to parliament and to the nation.

It's already law in the UK for live channels. If you have no TV but only watch BBC1 live through iPlayer, you must have a TV license. However, you don't need a TV license to watch time delayed programs (so anything from the iPlayer archive), so perhaps this is an area where the law will change, although it never has for TV.

The question is if you watch BBC1 streaming but 5 min behind, and hence watching a recording, are you required to have a TV license?

We had a debate about this at work while the Olympics were on. Interestingly you can watch live tv at work on a laptop that is not plugged in and on wifi if they don't have a tv license but you do at home. You break the law the minute you plug the laptop in.

I didn't think so but the BBC iPlayer's page about requiring a TV license claims so.

If you are using the live rewind function to either restart the current live programme or to rewind any live stream for up to 2 hours, a television license is required as you are still accessing the live simulcasts.

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_tv_progs/...

The usual wording is that it applies to devices that display or record something as it is being broadcast. So if you're delaying the stream yourself, that's recording a live broadcast. And a third party delaying and rebroadcasting the stream would be copyright infringement.

You must pay for the right to receive electromagnetic waves which are passing through your body 24/7, whether you like it or not.

Seems legit.

Swede here.

The money goes towards radio and television that is free from political influence, and also free from ads. It is like a tax for something most people benefit greatly from. It has nothing to do with the medium it is broadcasted through.

"radio and television that is free from political influence". Sorry, I believe your opinion is incorrect. Any form of non-trivial media has some sort bias.

> The money goes towards radio and television that is free from political influence [...]

The public TV stations depend more on politicians than any commercial media company, because it's the politicians that write the laws that dictate how much money they get, or if they should even receive any money in the first place.

So just take it out of general government revenues (raise them if necessary). Trying to tax only those who use the service (which is probably 99.9% of people) is ridiculous. It just creates more bureaucracy and is a waste of time for everyone involved.

Welcome to the club, dear Swedes!

The average German household will pay 215,76 Euro (~290 USD) for "receiving" (whether you have a device or not) government-run TV and radio programs.

In contrast, the same household will pay 786,56 Euro (~1050 USD) for National Defence.

Obviously watching football (the real one, my American friends) is almost as important as living in a free country

> football (the real one, my American friends [1])

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4msKdfMtGY

The Swiss do the same ("Billag") to the tune of 460 CHF per year for radio and tv. I basically see it as a tax for a public system as there seems absolutely no way of wiggling your way out of it. E.g even if you don't have kids, you will also pay for public schooling.

Just a sidenote. The fact that it's a fee instead of tax means that the government cannot change how much money SVT should receive. This means that journalists are not controlled by neither politicians or companies. This means that we have real journalism and free media. And I find that awesome =)

> The fact that it's a fee instead of tax means that the government cannot change how much money SVT should receive.

What do you mean? Politicians can change any law they wish. Unless it's in violation of the constitution. And I don't think withdrawing mandatory financial support to public broadcasting is prohibited in many constitutions.

They cannot do that during one period. They can only suggest such change and then the next elected government can approve it. This way the people will always be able to vote against such government. And I really doubt any party would suggest any drastic change on this topic.

Sweden: socialism. Check!

How is the tax actually/to be charged though?

The same way it was for television. Radiotjänsten personal goes door to door and asks if there is a receiver in the house. They might also try to listen for suspicious sound, peek into the living room or threaten, to get you to confess that you should pay the fee. Then you receive a yearly bill.

If I'm understanding it correctly, there's already a TV license in place that households pay. This update just means if your house doesn't have a TV, and instead consumes all media on a tablet or similar device, you still need to pay the fee, where as before you could argue you didn't need to pay it for lack of a TV.

Correct. Communism at its finest.

You used to have to show ID and provide an address when you bought a TV, then it would go into a "these households have a TV" database, and you would receive a yearly bill.

The extension is that it no longer applies only to TVs, but to PCs and tablets as well.

Does this not turn it into a poll tax?

You are forced to fund a propaganda box. Dear god. And some people consider this a norm(and even a good thing).

Of course entity that is dependent on public funding will protect its image, will fight for its long lasting survivability and lobby to enforce its funding by law.

ze irony.

On the other hand: TV programs break off every 15 minutes (or more) for various corporations to assault your eyes and ears with messages crafted to make you want to buy their rubbish. And many people consider this a norm.

Of course, an entity that is dependent on these commercial interests won't want to upset them too much, in case they take their advertising elsewhere.

Brit here: having a publicly funded broadcaster (that's required to act impartially) in addition to commercial media is very much a good thing.

All of that advertising still boils down to choice. I can refuse to purchase the goods that they're constantly peddling. The system is voluntary. Meanwhile, I cannot refuse the taxes/fees that the government decides to levy. In my own country (Canada), I am taxed for CBC whether I wish to watch/listen or not.

Essentially it boils down to "we as a government can't trust you, so we have to enforce these laws and you must comply or else you will face our enforcers".

Sadly, choice of 3 men overwrites choice of 3 million.

Trust is lacking, not only between governing body and sheep, but between sheep also, when sheep will start trusting each other, it will reflect on governing body.

>Essentially it boils down to "we as a government can't trust you, so we have to enforce these laws and you must comply or else you will face our enforcers".

That's really the essence of everything that the government does.

>Trust is lacking, not only between governing body and sheep, but between sheep also, when sheep will start trusting each other, it will reflect on governing body.

I think that people still tend to trust their governing body, though it obviously never trusts its own population. In countries with elections, the sacrament of voting is still observed by large numbers of people. But I think that apathy and pessimism is growing, but I see that as a good thing; you can see there is a concern, when governments begin to discuss or even enact mandatory voting laws. Then the sacrament becomes more than "duty", it becomes another act of coercion, like most of what government does.

Enjoy your taxes Sweden. I hope it's worth it.

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